AI Literacy: Activities

The following class activities can be used to give students practice with the strategies discussed in the AI Literacy and AI Literacy Strategies videos. The activities are designed to be adapted to different disciplinary contexts as well as different learning environments (face-to-face, online, hybrid).

1. AI & Your Discipline

   Have students watch the AI Literacy video, then discuss the impact of Generative AI on your discipline or the topic of your course. Use the guiding questions below to get students thinking about the implications of GenAI for their education, their future careers, and their field in general.

   Guiding questions:

   • How do you use GenAI as a student?
   • Has GenAI had an impact on how you learn in college, or how your professors teach?
   • What did you think being a [career] meant before you came to college? Has GenAI changed what you think your future career will be like?
   • What role do you envision GenAI playing in your future job?
   • What do you think you need to know about GenAI before you go on the job market?
   • What impacts have you already seen on [field/discipline] since GenAI has taken off?
   • What further impacts do you imagine?

   Next, have students read a short article about AI and your discipline.

   Example articles:

   • AI & Humanities
   • AI & STEM
   • AI & Business

   Ask students to reflect on the article and anything new they learned about AI and the discipline.

2. Evaluating AI

   Have ChatGPT (or another AI tool) write a summary of a well-known topic in your discipline or a concept you’ve recently discussed in class. Then, have students critique the summary using the guiding questions below.

   • What’s good about this summary?
   • What’s bad about this summary?
   • Is any important information missing?
   • Can you verify the claims being made? How?
   • If you were writing a summary of this topic, what would you do differently?
   • Is ChatGPT a good tool for summarizing? Why or why not?

3. Prompt Re-Engineering

   Provide students with a poorly written prompt about a topic in your discipline or a topic you’ve recently discussed in class. A very generic or vague prompt would work best (e.g. “Tell me about the French Revolution”). Have students test out this prompt and critique the AI response using the guiding questions below.

   • On a scale of 1-5 (with 1 being terrible and 5 being perfect), how would you rate the response you got with this prompt? Explain your score.
   • Is the AI response too long or too short? Does it have too much detail or not enough?
   • Does the response answer your question? Completely, somewhat, not at all?
   • What would you do to try to get a better response to your question from the chatbot?

   Then, watch the AI Literacy Strategies video to learn about prompt engineering. Consider also providing students with a link to a website or short article on prompt engineering strategies. Have students rewrite the bad prompt using what they learned and test out their new prompt, then reflect on the quality of the new response.