Center for Instructional Technology and Training
Generative AI allows for the creation of diverse and personalized assessment formats, providing students with unique questions, simulations, and problem-solving scenarios. This adaptability ensures that assessments cater to various learning preferences, fostering a more inclusive and equitable learning environment. By leveraging AI-driven feedback, educators can offer students personalized insights, pinpointing specific areas of improvement and suggesting tailored exercises. This continuous feedback loop encourages students to engage actively with their learning material and take ownership of their educational journey.
Furthermore, generative AI can facilitate interactive learning experiences, either through AI chatbots or AI conversation partners. Students can explain course concepts to an AI, which can then identify errors or misconceptions, providing immediate and targeted feedback. Self-quizzing and study aids powered by generative AI offer additional tools for students to reinforce their understanding and enhance their study habits. Resources such as the AI Prompt Cookbook provide valuable assignment ideas that integrate AI into the learning process. Ultimately, the use of generative AI in assessments transforms the educational experience, making it more interactive, personalized, and effective in helping students achieve their academic goals.
Generative AI can enhance the design, development, and evaluation of a course. From the initial analyze and design phase of course design, instructors can utilize AI to brainstorm and edit student learning objectives (SLOs) and ensure alignment with course goals and assessments. During the develop and implement phase, AI can assist with generating assessment and facilitation ideas that align to SLOs and promote varied and inclusive representation. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines emphasize the importance of diverse and accessible content; using AI to help create unique datasets, diverse perspectives in case studies, role playing scenarios, alt text in images, and more can help promote UDL guidelines while also maintaining a student-centered and comprehensive learning experience.
AI is also a valuable tool during the evaluate and review phase, as it allows instructors to analyze feedback and summarize trends and themes that provide valuable insights for continuous improvement. For ideas on using AI for all stages of course design, refer to the UFIT CITT AI Prompt Cookbook.
Generative AI can help improve the learning process by integrating principles from various learning theories. By applying behaviorist, cognitivist, and constructivist principles, generative AI can create personalized learning experiences that reinforce positive behaviors, enhance information processing, and encourage active learning. For example, AI can provide immediate feedback to reinforce correct answers (behaviorism), adapt content to match a student’s cognitive load (cognitivism), and create interactive, problem-solving activities that build on prior knowledge (constructivism). Generative AI can also help when implementing the learning strategies of Chickering and Gamson’s Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education and Robert Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction.
Incorporating Bloom’s Taxonomy, generative AI can design educational activities that progress through different levels of cognitive complexity, from basic knowledge recall to higher-order thinking skills like analysis, evaluation, and creation. This structured approach ensures that students not only understand the material but also apply, analyze, and create new knowledge based on what they’ve learned. By aligning AI-generated content with Bloom’s Taxonomy, educators can ensure a comprehensive and effective learning experience that promotes deep understanding and critical thinking. You might find it helpful to consult the AI Prompt Cookbook when applying these theories or strategies.
Generative AI can be used to take student engagement to the next level by crafting level-appropriate authentic assessments that incorporate real-life problems and scenarios for students to interact with. An instructor can extend collaboration by using generative AI to facilitate role playing for individual students or enhance established groups with an AI chatbot to fill a role in the group.
If you need help getting started with some of these descriptions, consider using the AI Prompt Cookbook for ideas to help establish a framework on which you can build and elaborate.
Generative AI has the potential to unlock new and exciting course activities, but it is important to consider the accessibility of AI tools before assigning students to use them. To discover more in-depth information about evaluating tools for digital accessibility, please visit our accessible course design page.
There are also exciting new uses of generative AI to assist you with creating accessible resources for your courses. A simple way to get started using AI for accessibility tasks could be using the Arizona State University Alt Text Generator tool. For a slightly more complicated task, you can try converting captioning files to transcripts by attaching them to a generative AI tool. Advanced users can even have AI transcribe and format handwritten notes. AI is continually improving and allowing for more opportunities to support accessibility efforts, but remember to evaluate any output generated by AI before using the content in your course.