Course Assignments and Class Activities

Course Assignments and Class Activities

Instructors are experimenting with a variety of ways to include use of GenAI systems in their courses, including both classroom activities and assignments. Below are a few ideas to consider, including examples from UO instructors, and we also list a few ideas for those wanting to mitigate use of GenAI. You can find additional ideas for assignments and activities, including a helpful decision tree for reviewing your course assignments, at the University of Michigan Course and Assignment(Re-)Design page.

Teaching Ideas

lara bovilsky
Lara Bovilsky's "What Counts as Evidence and Argument?" assignments

“I can say that the students really registered what it was that the AIs were leaving out... I have had a dramatically lower rate of submissions that seem as though they might be GenAI-involved. And I do let them use GenAI for a few specific things, but they need to submit the inputs and outputs."

rebekah hanley
Rebekah Hanley's legal argument assignment

“The legal profession is embracing generative AI, which offers lawyers the opportunity to complete more work, faster, and at a lower cost.  Once students develop the foundational skills necessary to effectively use generative AI—to be able to engineer useful prompts and then critically evaluate and improve upon the output—we should invite students to experiment with the tools."

scott pratt
Scott Pratt's oral exam solution

“As I was redesigning our introductory philosophy course, I wanted to respond to concerns about the role of AI for students writing essays. I decided to use oral exams to replace essays."

kate mondloch
Kate Mondloch's "Turning Point" Assignment
"I plan to engage students in 'big picture' discussions about generative AI—how will it impact their future careers, what are the pros and cons if one doesn’t learn to write independently, what stressors might contribute to the desire to use AI in inappropriate ways, etc."

Examples from UO Instructors

  • Instructor Kara Clevinger, English: Students use ChatGPT to foster critical literacy, argumentation, and writing. Specifically, they assess the strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT-generated prose; consider how they would provide revision feedback on such prose (as if it were a classmate’s work); and then use AI text as a departure point for analysis and articulation of their own thesis and argument.  You can view Kara’s ChatGPT assignment activity here.
  • Professor Mattie Burkert, English: Students use ChatGPT as part of the essay writing process to learn best practices for when and how to use GenAI, including proper citation of AI-generated text. Students also reflect critically on the ethics and potential dangers of new technologies such as AI.  You can view Professor Burkert's midterm assignment here, plus read the article that inspired it.

Promoting Analysis and Critical Thinking

  • Ask students to draft a thesis statement and submit it to ChatGPT so that it uses the statement to generate a persuasive essay. Then, ask students to evaluate the essay according to the expectations outlined in the rubric. Where does the essay meet or fall short of the criteria in the rubric? As a key component of their evaluation, students are to assign the essay a grade and provide a written explanation of their decision that references the specific language in the rubric for support. Instructors teaching online looking to add a more personal, humanized touch can ask students to record a video in which they explain their evaluation. This assignment can be adapted to encourage student-to-student collaboration; organize students in small groups and task them with sharing their respective thesis statements with the goal of choosing one to be entered into ChatGPT. Upon entering the chosen thesis statement and generating an essay, members of the group work together to evaluate the essay according to the expectations outlined in the assignment rubric. Groups then share their findings with the whole class.
  • Students can also practice analyzing and synthesizing texts using ChatGPT. For example, the instructor can task ChatGPT with generating a comparative essay that analyzes the gendered norms in “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin, and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Once the essay is generated, students can analyze its synthesis of the two stories and identify opportunities for improvement. Where might the essay’s argument be expanded or improved with more details from the stories or from researched support? In what ways is the essay’s argument or synthesis insightful and/or flawed? Do you find the essay’s synthesis to be persuasive? Why or why not? The activity can be adapted to multiple genres of texts as well as online formats. For example, an instructor teaching an online class could submit a ChatGPT essay to a social annotation tool like Hypothesis or Perusal, at which point students can use the annotation tool to discuss their thoughts and findings with their peers.  

Assisting Research and Brainstorming

  • Use Chat GPT to generate a list of terms and concepts relevant to a particular text or topic. Students can use these terms as the first step in a multi-tiered research process. Which of the terms sparks your curiosity? Which of the terms seem essential to our understanding of this text, argument, or even their rhetorical and/or historical context? Which would you be interested in researching further and why? What types of sources do you think are best suited to defining or explaining a given term? In a supplemental step, students could also use ChatGPT to generate definitions and/or explanations of these key terms. After doing so, students could conduct their own research to fact-check the ChatGPT answers and even compare/contrast their findings with those of ChatGPT. 

Contributing to Writing and Revision

  • ChatGPT can also be useful in supporting critical revision activities. For example, students can submit an essay rough draft to the AI and ask it to generate an outline of the essay. With the outline in hand, students can evaluate the organization of the outline or their essay with the goal of identifying opportunities to clarify key points or expand particular paragraphs or lines of thought. Students might also use the outline as a discursive map that helps them plan where in their essay they could address potential counterarguments or include researched support.  

Mitigating Use of GenAI

  1. Have students reference course-specific moments and materials such as lectures, discussions, labs, notes, handouts, or sources not otherwise available on the internet
  2. Have students respond to image-based or sound-based texts in your assignments, albeit be certain to include alt-text for accessibility.  
  3. Ask students to apply or connect personal experience and knowledge in relation to key concepts or topics.
  4. Have students use social annotation tools such as Hypothes.is or Perusall to engage with texts.
  5. Consider having students submit audio files, a podcast, a video, infographics, or other multimedia texts instead of written essays.
  6. Chunk major assignments, such as essays, into multiple due dates for key steps, such as an outline, notes on sources, drafts, etc.