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Great question, Kelly!
I haven’t yet had the pleasure of taking the Leveraging AI to Develop Course Resources Quick Study Course, but I have been using AI tools as collaborative brainstorming partners for course design, course development and faculty coaching for a little over a year. There are a instances where AI has been extremely helpful in the quality of the end product and the decreased time it takes to deliver/create –
1. One of the biggest time-savers has been leveraging several different specialized mini GPTs to create long alternative text descriptions for images of tables, charts, & graphs. While not always completely accurate (you ALWAYS need to audit), it’s so much easier to check & correct than to start from scratch.
2. Brainstorming with AI collaborators has also been useful for backward course design outlines to create mock-up options for committee review. Using careful, iterative prompting, AI collaborators (combining several different AIs) helped me with full course design outlines based on course outcomes, audience contextualization goals, and institutional initiatives. While I definitely don’t end up using every suggestion, and I do always end up tweaking the assessments and preparatory learning experiences that I do use – it’s immensely helpful to not start from scratch. Also, as I’m revising, I’m able to ask different AIs for alternative suggestions for the revisions themselves! Combining all of this helps me produce much higher quality work than I could do on my own and in at least one fourth of the time.
3. Leveraging AI has also helped me brainstorm very context-specific suggestions/recommendations for faculty coaching that’s specific to their course, their audience, their program goals, and our institutional goals.
4. AI has even helped me improve AI prompting templates themselves to share with faculty for integrating marketable skills into existing or new assignments.
5. AI’s been very helpful in crafting different variations of module introductions that are more engaging, exciting, intriguing, relevant, etc. than if the SME and I wrote them ourselves.
6. AI collaborators have helped immensely in brainstorming ideas to transform certain assignments and preparatory learning experiences to align with a more constructivist approach.
7. AI has also been helpful in coming up with low-medium-high detail variations of rubrics to review with a SME. Having these versions as starting points really helps us spend our time curating, refining and contextualizing rubrics.
8. AI frequently helps me come up with faux sample student submissions to show how that type of assignment would be graded. Faux sample student submissions can also be used to have students themselves use rubric criteria to “grade” the sample, giving them a deeper, more practical understanding of how their own submission will be graded.
9. One of my newest favorite things to do with AI is to have it come up with narrative scenario scripts for student analysis, error-detection, and opportunities for students to suggest improvements (applying course content). Instead of only having the time to generate one or two narrative scenario scripts, AI allows me to generate 5 or 6 scenario scripts in the same amount of time (even with all of them needing to be reviewed & edited). This means that the scenario can be contextualized 6 times instead of 2 – for example, I could have a statistic concept-based scenario for students aiming to be nurses, another scenario for those interested in mechatronics, a scenario for business & marketing majors, one for those in preparatory educator programs, and yet another for undecided majors. All scenarios teach the same statistic concept, but students get to choose which scenario is most relevant to them.
While I certainly see & feel the dangers of how quickly AI is transforming human interaction, thought processes, and the collective human knowledge trajectory – I also can attest that my AI-collaborated work output is stronger than my non-AI-collaborated work output. The collaborations are definitely great for iterative improvement goals, as well as providing so many options that it’s bound to get me to think about new ways to approach and improve.
One area I consciously minimize AI influence is in my writing style with person-to-person communication. I’ll tag AI in to offer suggestions for variations of hedging phrases or helping a “negative” statement be framed more positively. But, in general, I like my messages to sound like me & my thought process (which is naturally unpolished and sometimes a little all over the place), but it feels true to how I would talk to that individual in person.
I hope this is helpful! I did not use AI to generate any of this post (so it’s unrefined & probably littered with errors), but – I am a big believer in how helpful it can be to an instructional designer in higher education.