Teaching and Learning in the Age of AI: Considerations, Resources, and Opportunities

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On-demand resources

Thinking about the role of AI in your courses? Explore the following on-demand resources 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.

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.

Opportunities for departments, programs, and schools

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.

Upcoming events

Join the CTL for upcoming offerings to integrate digital transparency into your courses and experiment with various AI tools.

Leveraging AI for Learning Activities

August 12, 2024 – Register
3:00-4:30pm, Online

Have you been considering the role AI might play in your course assignments and activities? Are you interested in how you might engage your students in leveraging generative AI tools in their own learning?

Then join the CTL for this session on leveraging AI for learning activities! In this workshop, you will experiment with AI tools to design learning activities and experiences for your students. Explore possible uses of AI for your own course, including getting feedback, role playing, and more! You will have an opportunity to experiment with ChatGPT to then critically assess the output to determine its use and effectiveness for your course context.

Leveraging AI for Teaching and Course Design

August 14, 2024 – Register
1:00-2:30pm, Online

Are you curious how you might leverage AI in your teaching and course design? Wondering what processes and tasks AI might be able to help streamline?

Then join the CTL for this session on leveraging AI for teaching and course design! In this workshop, you will experiment with AI tools for your teaching needs. Explore possible uses of AI for your own course, including designing learning objectives, brainstorming activities and assignments that help students achieve a particular learning objective, developing rubrics, and more! You will have an opportunity to experiment with ChatGPT to then critically assess the output to determine its use and effectiveness for your course context.

AI Institute for Faculty

September 17, 2024 – Register
10:00-4:00pm, 203 Butler Library

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2023, generative AI has greatly impacted teaching and learning in higher education. Join the CTL to explore how you might leverage these tools for your teaching and learning goals in the upcoming academic year! This 1-day institute offers 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. Lunch will be provided. 

Participants will have an opportunity to learn more about AI literacy, and how they might foster both their own and their students’; 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. Join a single session to meet your needs, or join us for the full day – CTL staff will reach out to registered participants to confirm the sessions they will participate in.

Faculty Book Discussion Group 

September 26, October 24, November 21
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 C. 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.

Past events (2023)

Teaching Lab for Generative AI Tools for Faculty 

Teaching Lab for Generative AI Tools: Designing Effective Prompts

In this lab session, instructors will gain experience crafting effective prompts for AI and explore various strategies for incorporating prompt engineering into their classes. Understanding how to design prompts that can effectively drive AI-powered learning tools is a skill that allows instructors and learners to unlock the full potential of AI in the classroom and beyond. 

Teaching Lab for Generative AI Tools: Community Building

In this lab session, instructors will explore practical strategies for using AI tools to cultivate a sense of belonging, foster interaction, and stimulate intellectual curiosity amongst their students. Instructors who are interested in discussing AI tools in their courses–or embedding them into assignments–might find employing AI in community building a low-stakes and potentially fun way to begin the conversation about AI in their classes.  

Teaching with AI: Teachers’ Lounges for Graduate Students 

Teaching with AI: Exploring Tools 

This session will be devoted to tinkering with a set of tools powered by AI — both text- and image-based. We’ll explore these tools at stations in small groups, brainstorming ways they could motivate curiosity and learning in our respective disciplines. To suggest a specific tool to queue up for this session, reach out to us ahead of time at CTLgrads@columbia.edu.  

Teaching with AI: Notes from the Frontline

In this session we’ll continue explorations of AI tools and hear from instructors who have proactively tried them out in some form with students. Since our focus is on practical applications of AI to teaching, we will be collectively considering aspects of incorporating these tools into assignments — such as privacy, attribution, and metacognitive growth.  

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 will offer a framework for transparent design to ensure that students know the purpose, the task, and the criteria for success on an assignment.

Bring an assignment idea or an existing assignment to work on. During the 3-hour session, you will apply the transparent design framework to your course assignment, engage in peer review, create a rubric for your assignment, and plan for implementation.

Related resources: Designing Assignments for Learning; and Incorporating Rubrics Into Your Feedback and Grading Practices

“… assignments that are designed to create student engagement and motivation will be most influential in learning, regardless of whether or not professors utilize artificial intelligence.” – Olivia Schmitt | Undergraduate Student, School of Engineering and Applied Science

Read what Olivia and her peers had to say about AI and their learning: Learner Perspectives on AI Tools: Digital Literacy, Academic Integrity, and Student Engagement

Teaching and ChatGPT Forum 

Campus Conversations: Teaching with AI Tools  

Three 60-minute conversations for Columbia Faculty and Graduate students.

The national and international discussions about generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, like ChatGPT, have been developing at a rapid pace in recent months. While many conversations about these tools raise concerns about assignment design and academic integrity, there is also a strong consensus that AI presents higher education with an exciting opportunity to explore creative ways to leverage it as a tool in teaching and learning!

To help facilitate productive, generative conversations about the potential for AI tools in teaching and learning, the Center for Teaching and Learning is hosting a series of campus conversations to engage the Columbia teaching community in discussion around AI Tools in higher education.

Each conversation this semester will revolve around a different theme, including: the potential for AI tools to enhance student learning, the function of writing in a world with ChatGPT, considerations for assessment of learning and assignment design when incorporating AI tools, and the importance of human engagement in teaching and learning.

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. Join us for an open discussion about 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? Join us for an open discussion about 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? Join us for a conversation with Dr. Victoria Malaney-Brown, Director of Academic Integrity, to discuss the purposeful integration of AI tools in assignments and transparent ways to assess student work in a world with ChatGPT.

If you missed these campus conversations on “Teaching with AI Tools” but would like to discuss the topics, please schedule a 1-on-1 consultation or invite the CTL to facilitate these conversations for your department, program, or school. Contact us at CTLfaculty@columbia.edu.

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’ll explore 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.

Related Resources and Tips

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.

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.

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.

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.