I’m part of a faculty GenAI Exploration group at my institution. To wrap up the semester the facilitator asked us to write a more general post explaining where we’re at with GenAI and where we are going. This made me think about the American “State of the Union” speech or the Queen’s Christmas address. Although I don’t really think of myself as the head of a nation state or queen of my classroom, I am a leader and I provide vision, so with that in mind here is my “State of the – AI – Union” address. 

Current Strategies 

This semester I made some big changes at the start that were grounded in the syllabus. I included three guidelines: 1. AI can be used for anything but you must explain how you used it by included an “AI statement” at the bottom of your work. 2. AI generated text can be copied and pasted into assignments but you must change the text colour (to blue) to show copied text. 3. If you submit an assignment where I could create the entire assignment myself using AI I will send it back to you. You must include your own voice in your assignments. 

What did I mean by “your own voice”? I really tried to emphasize with students the work of integrating their own voice in two different ways: 1. Integrating their lived experience as related to their identity, social location, and life experience. 2. Integrating their own opinions and recommendations.  

How well did this all work? 

Overall I felt this was a good start, however there were some stumbling blocks. The first was that in one social work skills-based course we had a series of in-class skills demonstrations. These were great AI-proof assessments as I had to see the skill demonstrated live in class, however there was also a reflective component and I could tell that many students were using AI to write their personal reflections. The second was that there were other areas of writing for my courses where even though AI was permitted there still seemed to be AI use without disclosure or transparency.

On the other hand I had some great successes. A handful of students really embraced the idea of an AI statement and included whole appendices showing and analyzing their iterative work with AI. I also continued to use the Unessay as one of the major assignments for a course and took out the option of writing a traditional essay. I received many incredible creative and arts-based works including a zine, skit, sculpture, mask, story, children’s book, and animated video. These Unessays seemed to spark students’ passion in the policies they were learning about and analyzing and gave them the opportunity to create highly inspiring, rigorous and impactful work. 

Where am I going? 

One of the main questions I am wrestling with right now is “how important is assessment, really, and can its role in my courses change?” Can I put my energy and focus into relationship building and creating relevant, engaging, and vibrant learning opportunities and ways for students to demonstrate their learning, but then at some point let students decide how much or little they want to engage and be OK with that? For me this relates to a concept that a colleague shared with me from Jo Chrona’s recent BC Campus workshop in November, the concept of “high-expectations relationships” (Chrona, 2024). I interpret this as expecting my students to be prepared, skilled, and interested, and providing them with learning opportunities, but then also trusting them as autonomous adults to make their own decisions about their life and time. If they want to rush through an assessment by leaning more heavily on AI can I trust they have a good reason for that and let go of my role in it?

Where this gets “crunchy” is my accountability to the grade and the credential. As a teacher, leader, and social work professional though I have enough trust in the spectrum of learning opportunities and experiences I’ve created in my courses as a whole that students will learn. If a student uses AI to generate a reflection but was in class most days engaging with all the learning activities then I trust that overall they have learned in my course. Do I need to pile on more assessment to show that? 

STRIVE and my values 

I just attended a workshop with our Centre for Teaching and Learning about AI and Assessment and the director shared a great tool from the University of Calgary called the STRIVE model. This model is based on the values of student-centeredness, transparency, responsibility, integrity, validity, and equity (STRIVE). I like this model because the values align with a lot of what I’ve been trying to do. During the workshop I started jotting down other words or values that guide me with AI and I came up with my own acronym. Unfortunately it doesn’t work out to a beautiful word like STRIVE, but I came up with SCIPTH – student-centred, creativity, intrinsic motivation, passion, trust, and high-expectations relationships. 

Where am I going? 

Looking forward to next semester I have a few plans and changes I would like to make to better align my teaching practice with my AI values in SCIPTH: 

  1. Start to treat AI more like Google: Expect that it will be used, don’t (necessarily) ask if or how it was used, don’t police it. But also don’t take on sole responsibility to teach how to use it. Teach it by integrating it into relevant work-place related assignments but also expect students to learn by doing, talking to friends, and accessing resources or training outside of my class.  
  1. Give more opportunity for rapid in-class reflection and consolidation of learning: This semester I “outsourced” this to post-class reflections that were submitted online, and this doesn’t really work that well in an AI world anymore. I think I need to start giving more polls, tickets out the door, and short hand-written opportunities for consolidation and reflection at the end of class inside class time. 
  1. Keep going with arts-based and experiential learning: I have seen some incredible and transformational learning happen this semester through arts-based and experiential opportunities, assignments and in-class activities (such as a field trip to the art gallery with my class). This kind of learning sparks passion and lights up that intrinsic motivation in students. I need to keep this in mind as I design and plan my courses and assessments for next semester and be sure to continue to include them. I believe they help create “AI-proof zones” where learning happens in a more tangible and human way. 
  1. Be kind and patient with myself: Often this work can feel overwhelming, and feel like a lot to do on top of the day-to-day work of teaching. I need to keep reminding myself that it’s OK to be a work in progress, make mistakes, not be up to date on everything AI, and to share all this with my students who are on their own overwhelming journey to help us build those trusting and high expectations relationships. 

This is the end of my “State of the – AI – Union” address. I’m sure next year I will have a whole brand new set of ideas, thinking and direction to share as everything is changing so fast. I also can’t separate my thinking on assessment and AI from all the changes we are seeing in post-secondary education more broadly when it comes to funding and changes to immigration policy. How we assess learners, AI and the direction of the college towards more alignment with the labour-market are all different sides of the same stone that is spinning into the future. I will need to hold my “SCIPTH” values close to guide me through all the various parts of this rapid change. 

References

Chrona, Jo. (2024). Wayi Wah! Building Stronger Education Systems Through Indigenous-Informed Pedagogies and Anti-Racist Education. BC Campus Workshop at Royal Rhodes University, November 5, 2024.

Photo by Lukåƥ Vaƈåtko on Unsplash