Talking with Students about Generative AI
While we are working to share resources with students about using generative AI, and developing AI literacy materials, it’s worth talking with your students about generative AI – especially if you plan to use it or have your students use it in the course.
You might consider sharing:
- Definition and Use Cases: Start with a brief overview of what generative AI is and how it works.
- Training Process: Discuss how generative AI models are trained using large datasets and how the quality of output depends on the data it’s trained on.
- Capabilities: Touch on how these AI models can generate novel content, emulate human-like text, produce artworks, and how they’re being used in diverse areas like entertainment, education, and research.
- Limitations: Discuss the limitations such as inability to truly understand context or human emotions, factual errors or ‘hallucinations,’ the risk of generating inappropriate or biased content, and the challenge of generating long, coherent narratives.
- Ethical Considerations: Discuss ethical issues such as potential misuse of AI-generated content for disinformation or deepfakes, copyright considerations, and privacy issues related to the use of personal data in training these models.
- Future of Generative AI: Discuss the future potential of these tools, including the role they could play in society and the kind of regulations or policies that might be needed.
You then might want to have an open discussion with your students – full disclosure, ChatGPT helped generate these discussion questions! but we edited them.
Discussion Questions
- How can generative AI be used to enhance teaching and learning in a post-secondary setting?
- What are the potential drawbacks or risks of incorporating generative AI into the educational process?: This might stimulate a discussion on issues like fairness, privacy concerns, and the potential for AI to make errors.
- Can AI-generated content replace human instructors for certain teaching activities? If so, which ones and why?: This question encourages students to consider the value and irreplaceability of human instruction.
- How can we ensure that the use of AI in education doesn’t exacerbate existing inequalities (such as access to technology or learning opportunities)?: This could spark a debate about equity and accessibility in education.
- Should students be taught how to interact with and utilize AI as a part of their educational curriculum? Why or why not?: This can lead to a discussion on the importance of digital literacy in the 21st century.
- How might generative AI impact academic integrity? Could it lead to increased plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty?: This question can provoke thoughts on how technology might be misused in an academic setting.
- How might the use of AI in formative assessment change the teacher-student relationship? Could it make the process more objective, or could it devalue human judgment and feedback?: This question can stir a discussion on the human aspects of teaching and learning.
