Gen AI has become an important tool in the academic landscape. According to the Digital Education Council Global AI Student Survey 2024, 85% of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral students globally use AI in academic tasks that range from summarization and concept reinforcement to research. Instructors can leverage AI-powered tools to make content accessible, brainstorm ideas to engage all learners, convert text-based content into alternative modes (like audio and video), and more. At the same time, the growing student over-reliance on these tools has strained the capabilities of traditional plagiarism detection.

As we understand the implications of Gen AI for learning, instructors, instructional designers, and staff can play an important role in helping students acquire critical AI literacy (AIL) skills, including:

• Understanding the capabilities and limitations of Gen AI

• Understanding the application of Gen AI tools and practical ways to interact with AI models effectively

• Discussing AI’s societal impact

• Demonstrating the ethical use of AI tools

 

As faculty members feel the need to build a strong foundation in AIL to support student development, instructional designers can play a scaffolding role. Keeping in mind that not all instructors share a common understanding of AI's capabilities and limitations, and that instructors' emotions about the use of AI in education vary significantly (from fear and resentment to enthusiasm without question), instructional designers can support instructors (and their students) effectively.

 

Regarding learning assessment, there is a lot of discussion on employing alternative strategies, such as shifting the focus of assignments from the final product to the process itself. Additionally, AI policies should not be just lines in the syllabus serving as a reminder to students of why they lost points on an assignment. Conversely, AI policies must be reflected in the assessment instructions and rubrics.

 

When supporting faculty with course design and development, instructional designers can demonstrate their skills in integrating AI ethically to improve content. There are many ways to use AI without limiting human creativity. Prompt engineering to improve an assignment's instructions, text-to-speech conversion to provide multiple means of representation, and creating a syllabus quiz using Gemini are only a few ways that instructional designers can help faculty develop critical AIL.

 

Through this collaborative partnership, instructional designers and faculty can move beyond simple compliance to create a culture of inquiry, ensuring that students are prepared to navigate an AI-driven world ethically and effectively.

 

Faculty Resources to Consider

• Teaching with AI - AI Pedagogy Project MetLab (at) Harvard website

• Artificial Intelligence Teaching Guide - Stanford Teaching Commons.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) toolkit page - Georgetown University