Rethink Your Pedagogy and Curriculum with Generative AI

AI generated photo of Jonathan Carrigan

 

Written by

Jonathan Carrigan

Generative AI Consultant in the CTL

Generative AI (GenAI) is a branch of artificial intelligence that can create (generate) new content, such as text, images, music, or code. GenAI has many applications and benefits for teaching and learning in higher education, but it also requires a careful and thoughtful approach to adapt your pedagogy and curriculum to leverage its potential. In this article, we will help you navigate the process of rethinking your pedagogy and curriculum to adopt GenAI, providing you with some guidance and advice on how to do it.

Why?

Rethinking your pedagogy and curriculum to integrate GenAI is an important and progressive step in supporting our students through teaching and learning in higher education. GenAI can support and enhance the learning outcomes, processes, and experiences of your students, as well as your teaching goals, methods, and practices. For example, you can use GenAI to:

Save time and improve the quality of your teaching materials

GenAI can generate lesson plans, learning objectives, assessment rubrics, summaries, outlines, introductions, feedback, hints, explanations, quizzes, tests, or exercises, based on your course topics and standards.

Engage your students with interactive and personalized learning activities

GenAI can generate chatbots, games, or simulations that can respond to your students’ inputs, preferences, or needs in a specific way, and provide them with customized learning paths, recommendations, or scaffolds.

Teach your students how to use GenAI as a critical skill for their future professions

Exposing them to different GenAI tools, models, and outputs, and encouraging them to analyze, evaluate, and create with them, in various domains and contexts will better prepare them for the ever evolving world of work.

By rethinking your pedagogy and curriculum with GenAI, you can explore new possibilities, perspectives and solutions for your teaching and learning, and foster deeper learning, agency and passion in your students.

How?

Integrating GenAI requires a careful and thoughtful approach, as well as an awareness and understanding of the inherent challenges and opportunities. Here are some steps and tips to help you in the process of rethinking your teaching practice with GenAI:

What are some Challenges and Opportunities?

Rethinking your pedagogy and curriculum with GenAI can pose some challenges and risks, but also offer some opportunities and benefits. Here are some of them:

Challenges and Risks

  • GenAI can be unreliable and inaccurate, and may produce outputs that are incorrect, misleading, inappropriate or harmful. Be aware of the potential errors, biases, or limitations of GenAI, and verify, validate, and moderate the outputs before using or sharing them. It is important to provide your students with the skills and understanding to critically evaluate and use GenAI outputs appropriately, and avoid plagiarism, fabrication, or falsification.
  • Be aware of the ethical, moral and legal implications and responsibilities of using GenAI, and comply with the relevant policies, standards, and regulations surrounding it’s use. Respect the intellectual property, consent, and confidentiality of the data and information being used as the input and ensure that they are not misused, abused, or exploited. Visit the Ethics, Data Privacy and Security, and FIPPA Considerations of the Generative AI section of the CTL website.
  • GenAI may be perceived as disruptive, challenging, or threatening for some individuals, and potentially impact the roles, relationships, or expectations of yourself or others. Be aware of the social, cultural and emotional impacts and implications of using GenAI, and ensure there are opportunities for communication and collaboration to best support yourself and others. Balance the use of GenAI with human judgment, interaction, and feedback, and ensure that it augments, your teaching and learning, rather than replacing it.

Opportunities and Benefits

  • GenAI can be wonderfully innovative, creative and inspiring, and produce outputs that are novel, useful and valuable. You can use GenAI to enhance, enrich, or extend your pedagogy and curriculum, and explore new possibilities, perspectives and solutions for your teaching practice and student learning. It has the power to stimulate, challenge and inspire creativity, curiosity and imagination.
  • Generative AI can be educational, informative and supportive of learning, providing outputs that are highly relevant, personalized, and detailed. Use GenAI to facilitate, optimize, and improve your pedagogy and curriculum, and achieve better outcomes, processes and experiences for your instructional practice. One of the greatest benefits is using GenAI to scaffold, guide, personalize and support student learning, understanding, and development.
  • GenAI can be empowering, engaging and motivating, and enable outputs that are meaningful, authentic and even enjoyable or amusing! Use GenAI to foster deeper learning, empower student agency and grow their passion by connecting learning to your students’ interests, preferences or goals.

Conclusion

Generative AI is a powerful and promising technology that can have significant impacts and benefits for teaching and learning in higher education. However, using GenAI in your teaching and learning requires a careful and thoughtful approach, as well as an awareness and understanding of the inherent challenges and opportunities. We hope that this article has helped and encouraged you in the process of rethinking your pedagogy and curriculum with generative AI, and provided you with some guidance and advice on how to do it. If you are interested in using generative AI in your courses, you can use the Submit a GenAI Tool form to request the exploration and review of the GenAI tool that you want to use if it is not already included in the guidebook. You can also visit the Generative AI in Teaching and Learning website to access more resources and suggestions on integrating GenAI into your teaching and learning.

Learn more about GenAI

Explore all the resources available in the GenAI section of the CTL website, along with registering and participating in available GenAI CTL PD sessions.