Pedagogical Resources
Thinking about the role of AI in your courses? Explore the following on-demand resources and join us for events for strategies and perspectives on teaching and learning with AI.
Considerations for AI Tools in the Classroom
Given the rapid pace of technological innovation and development, higher education, like nearly all industries, is continuously called upon to consider creative approaches to teaching and learning. This resource offers instructors a brief introduction to AI tools, specifically ChatGPT, along with several strategies they might consider for navigating or engaging with these tools in their courses.
Designing an Inclusive Syllabus
Review your syllabus. Consider how your expectations on student participation, assessments, and other course policies can be made clearer. Communicate your policy on digital transparency. Be explicitly with students about your expectations around the usage of AI tools to support their learning.
Designing Assignments for Learning
[Re]Design assignments and rubrics with AI in mind. Consider breaking down large assignments into subtasks and providing feedback along the way, assigning authentic assignments that invite students to make connections between what they learn in the classroom and their local community. Communicate to students how AI can be used as they work on an assignment and the extent to which AI use can be included in what they submit. Clarify what you are looking for in student work with a rubric.
Incorporating Generative AI in Teaching and Learning: Faculty Examples Across Disciplines
Faculty across Columbia University are reimagining their course policies, assignments, and activities to refocus on student learning and transparently communicate expectations to their students about the use of generative AI. In what follows, faculty across disciplines provide a glimpse into their approaches as they experiment with AI in their classrooms and teach AI literacy to their students.
Learner Perspectives on AI Tools: Digital Literacy, Academic Integrity, and Student Engagement
The CTL’s undergraduate student consultants share their thoughts on ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools and what that might mean for upholding academic integrity in the classroom.
Learning Through Writing in the Age of AI
The following resource looks at why writing activities are beneficial for instructors and students alike, and offers some considerations and strategies for writing activities in the age of AI.
Metacognition
Talk with your students about their learning and important skills like metacognition. This resource provides instructors with an overview of the what and why of metacognition and general “getting started” strategies for teaching for and with metacognition.
Promoting Academic Integrity
While it is each student’s responsibility to understand and abide by university standards towards individual work and academic integrity, instructors can help students understand their responsibilities through frank classroom conversations that go beyond policy language to shared values. By creating a learning environment that stimulates engagement and designing assessments that are authentic, instructors can minimize the incidence of academic dishonesty.
Video Series: Leveraging AI for Teaching and Learning
This video series provides examples of ways to leverage AI for teaching, course design as well as for learning activities that engage students in developing AI literacy skills. Each video includes a demonstration using ChatGPT-4o. The prompts used in each demonstration are shared in the video descriptions.
For Faculty
Faculty Book Discussion Group
3:00-4:00pm, 213 Butler Library and Online
Are you curious how you might leverage AI in your teaching and course design? Have you been considering the role AI might play in your course assignments and activities? Looking to learn more about the impact and benefits on using AI as a partner to human thinking?
Then join the CTL for a discussion of José Antonio Bowen and Edward Watson’s new book Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, where we will discuss these questions and more! You will join colleagues across three 60-minute sessions organized around the book’s thematic framing: thinking with AI, teaching with AI, and learning with AI. In addition to discussing the book itself, you will have an opportunity to experiment with some of the ideas proposed in the book, as well as discuss your own course materials in relation to AI.
For Departments, Programs, and Schools
Facilitation
Looking to have conversations with your colleagues about teaching and learning with AI? The CTL is available to facilitate these conversations upon request. Contact the CTL at CTLfaculty@columbia.edu
Request a Learning Community to Go on Teaching and Learning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence!
The surge of AI tools has different implications for different disciplines, which is why the CTL is visiting departments and schools to facilitate a forum for colleagues to discuss innovations and challenges, share best practices, and talk about the aspects of AI that matter the most to you as instructors in a shared discipline. Topics might include the ways in which generative AI can be used to support teaching and enhance learning, opportunities to try out new pedagogical approaches, and strategies to best teach students the critical thinking and analysis skills they will need in a world of AI-generated content.
Department chairs and program directors can request the CTL facilitate a conversation either in-person or via Zoom; we are happy to join existing meetings or groups, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to discuss the format that makes the most sense for your teaching community.
For Graduate Students
Teaching with AI Fellowship
This fellowship for currently enrolled Columbia doctoral students is dedicated to exploring the pedagogical affordances of AI and will help the Columbia community cultivate models and support for effective, ethical use of AI in teaching. Learn more on the Teaching with AI Fellows page.
CUIT AI Services – a suite of AI services designed to open new modes of discovery in interdisciplinary research and to enhance productivity including advanced audio transcription, text anonymization, and automated text mining.
CUIT ChatGPT Enterprise – information on ChatGPT Enterprise from Columbia University Information Technology.
CU-GPT – CU-GPT is Columbia University’s Generative AI, designed for the Columbia community, harnesses the power of AI to enhance productivity, innovation, and collaboration across the university
CUIT Emerging Technologies’ AI: Community of Practice (AICoP) – a multidisciplinary community and platform for learning, discussion, and application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) at Columbia University.
2024
Leveraging AI for Learning Activities
60-minute workshop for Faculty, August 2024
During this workshop, participants experimented with ChatGPT to design learning activities and experiences for their students, including getting feedback and role playing. Participants critically assessed the output to determine its use and effectiveness for their course context.
Leveraging AI for Teaching and Course Design
60-minute workshop for Faculty, August 2024
During this workshop, participants experimented with ChatGPT to support teaching needs, including designing learning objectives, brainstorming activities and assignments that help students achieve a particular learning objective, and developing rubrics. Participants critically assessed the output to determine its use and effectiveness for their course context.
AI for Teaching and Learning Institute
1-day event for Faculty, September 2024
Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2023, generative AI has greatly impacted teaching and learning in higher education. This 1-day institute offered sessions around several pressing AI topics in teaching and learning, including AI literacy, leveraging AI for your teaching and course design, and leveraging AI for learning activities. Participants had the opportunity to experiment with ChatGPT to meet teaching and course design needs (e.g., developing activities to meet a specific learning objective, designing rubrics) and to design learning activities that engage students.
2023-2024
Teaching Lab for Generative AI Tools for Faculty
Three 60-minute lab sessions for Faculty on the following topics:
- Designing Effective Prompts
- Community Building
- Active Learning
During these lab sessions, participants explored practical strategies for using AI tools. They engaged in hands-on experimentation with tools and discussed potential applications in their classrooms.
Teaching with AI: Teachers’ Lounges for Graduate Students
Teachers’ Lounges are a series of informal discussions about teaching practices and the culture of learning at Columbia. Our conversations often introduce participants to related educational models, research, and theory, and invite dialogue about their pertinence to day to day teaching.
- Teaching with AI: Prompt Realizations (Spring 2024)
- Developing Critical AI Literacy (Spring 2024)
- Teaching with AI: Exploring Tools (Fall 2023)
- Teaching with AI: Notes from the Frontline (Fall 2023)
3-hour workshop for faculty: Transparent Assignment and Rubric Design in the Age of AI
AI and its use in assignments has exposed a critical need for instructors to make their assignment expectations completely transparent to students. This session offered a framework for transparent design to ensure that students know the purpose, the task, and the criteria for success on an assignment.
Related resources: Designing Assignments for Learning; and Incorporating Rubrics Into Your Feedback and Grading Practices
Teaching and ChatGPT Forum
During the Forum, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and campus partners shared resources and facilitated an informal conversation about AI tools and their implications in the classroom. Access the recording.
Campus Conversations: Teaching with AI Tools
Three 60-minute conversations for Columbia Faculty and Graduate students.
- Are humans still relevant!? Big questions for higher education and AI tools: Media headlines and popular discourse can certainly make it seem like AI Tools are poised to replace the need for a human workforce in the future. Yet higher education finds itself with an opportunity to rethink student learning for a future in which they work with these tools, rather than against them. This open discussion focused on what those skills and opportunities are, and how the Columbia teaching community can embrace the relational foundation of teaching and learning.
- Enhancing student learning with AI and ChatGPT: How can instructors embrace and work with AI tools to further enhance student learning? What are student perspectives on AI tools? This open discussion focused on how to communicate with students on this topic and provide support for student learning in the ever-changing landscape of AI technology.
- Assessment and assignment design with AI Tools: How can instructors design assessments for students to use and build upon AI tools to enhance their learning? Dr. Victoria Malaney-Brown, Director of Academic Integrity, joined us for a conversation to discuss the purposeful integration of AI tools in assignments and transparent ways to assess student work in a world with ChatGPT.
Using AI Writing Tools in Your Scientific Writing Process
AI writing tools such as ChatGPT are here to stay. These powerful tools can generate sophisticated text from scratch or revise human writing. In this seminar and workshop with Tim Requarth, we explored using AI writing tools in the scientific writing process.
This event was co-sponsored by the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, Teachers College, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and the departments of Biological Sciences and Statistics.
Tim Requarth is a Lecturer in Science & Writing at NYU Grossman School of Medicine where he teaches scientific writing courses, workshops, and seminars at the Vilcek Institute for Biomedical Sciences. He is also an award-winning freelance science journalist and contributing writer at Slate, with other work appearing in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and more. Dr. Requarth holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Columbia University.