This module is designed to support educators in thoughtfully incorporating GenAI tools into their teaching practice, emphasizing critical, ethical, and creative approaches. It introduces a framework combining human-centred and compassionate design principles to enhance critical thinking, creativity, empathy, collaboration, and personalization in learning experiences with GenAI.

First key questions:

• What aspects of your teaching do you value the most?
• How do you maximize those elements in your teaching?

Background

While GenAI is becoming an integral part of education, the key question is how can educators leverage these tools to enhance student learning while maintaining the human elements that are core values of their teaching practice? Fang and Kim (2024) highlight that educators can use GenAI to enhance the effectiveness of course design and development. Below is a table summarizing the applications of GenAI in course design from course mapping to creating assessment activities to media creation. (Fang & Broussard, 2024).

Circle the uses that you are familiar with.

In this module, I invite us to go deeper into how these tools can go beyond lesson planning to enhance human qualities that are essential in our teaching and learning practice. As experienced educators know, teaching evolves far beyond formal lesson planning – something that many of us mainly did during practicum and early teaching years.  The essence of teaching practice lies in care for students and approaches to creating engaging and meaningful learning experiences that help students succeed. This brings us to a crucial question: how can GenAI tools enhance, rather than replace, essential human qualities in our teaching practices?

Drawing on recent scholarly insights, this module presents a framework to effectively incorporate GenAI into teaching practices through human-centred design and compassionate design principles. This approach ensures that as we apply these tools in our teaching, we maintain a critical, ethical, inclusive lens that prioritizes our values, learning outcomes, student engagement, and success.

Strategies for Enhancing Human Elements in Teaching with GenAI

(1) Cultivate critical GenAI literacy (Bali, 2024)

Maha Bali (2024) emphasizes the necessity of cultivating critical GenAI literacy among students. This involves not only teaching students how to use these tools effectively, but also enabling them to critically analyze and question the outputs of GenAI. By incorporating activities that challenge students to evaluate the accuracy, bias, and ethical implications of generated content, we foster a critical mindset that is essential in today’s information-saturated world. For more information, review module 4.

Critical AI tool activity: Despite the rapid growth of the generative AI landscape, many of the initial ethical concerns, such as bias, trust, privacy, copyright, equity, and transparency, persist. This GenAI output analysis exercise encourages students to evaluate the accuracy, bias, and other ethical considerations of GenAI-generated content related to your subject matter.

(2) Develop transparency, responsibility, and integrity by co-creating GenAI policies and guidelines with learners (Anselmo et al., 2024)

As noted by Anselmo et al. (2024), co-creating GenAI policies and guidelines with learners is crucial for fostering a sense of responsibility and integrity. This collaborative process not only demystifies the operational mechanics of GenAI but also aligns its use with the ethical standards of our educational communities. Transparent discussions and policy frameworks can guide students to use GenAI in a manner that is ethical and constructive. For more information, review module 5.

(3) Prioritise accessibility, diversity, and inclusion in designing learning activities with GenAI (Selkrig et al., 2023)

Selkrig et al. (2023) stress the importance of using GenAI tools to support the design of learning activities that are inclusive and accessible. And, if these tools are allowed in the coursework, ensure that these technologies are used in ways that do not exclude any group based on disability, economic, or cultural background.

GenAI tools can be used for:

1. Content adaptation for diverse learners (e.g. rewriting the text or specific information for different learners; or translating programme documentation into plain language suitable for first-year student facing course outline.)
2. Enhanced communication through editing (e.g., GenAI can be partners in drafting course announcements or emails or copy-editing tone to be more inclusive.)
3. Multilingual support and translation (e.g., translating instructional videos and materials into various language.)
4. Enhanced accessibility features of instructional resources (e.g., creating alt text and transcriptions.)

Resources:

UBC’s GenAI and Universal Design for Learning: This recording is an OER resource from UBC introducing the integration of universal design for learning (UDL) and GenAI to create more inclusive, and accessible learning experiences. It covers the principles of UDL and demonstrates how GenAI can help enhance these principles.

(4) Apply strategies from inquiry and active learning to making learning engaging, authentic, meaningful, and effective (Selkrig et al., 2023)

Inquiry and active learning strategies are pivotal in making learning with GenAI engaging, authentic, and effective. As outlined by Selkrig et al. (2023), these strategies encourage students to engage deeply with content, fostering a learning environment where students are investigators and creators rather than passive receivers.

For example, educators can use GenAI to make content more engaging through the use of interactives, simulations, and graphical content, as well as by generating analogies for abstract concepts, creating reflective questions for course readings or video scripts, generating students learning tasks, and providing feedback based on existing course content. In addition, “educators can also use AI to design new assignments, supporting students to achieve learning outcomes in an engaging ways by encouraging students to be investigators, creators or implementing AI-enhanced activities like escape room challenges or AI-facilitated debates.” (Bowen & Watson, 2024, p. 172)

Consider some of the following prompts:

• How might students use AI on this activity? How might I make it harder to cheat using AI on this assignment?
• Suggest ten ways to make this assignment more motivating, engaging, and relevant for early childhood education students.
• Design an AI-facilitated debate activity for my course on [topic].
• You are a college student who will engage in a friendly debate with me. Ask me what topic I want to debate and then ask me to state a position. Challenge my perspective with alternate views and data. Only take your side and do not prompt me with potential arguments I could make. Keep your responses similar in length to mine.

(5) Foster collaboration and relationships in learning activities and tasks

Encouraging collaboration using GenAI tools can transform traditional learning dynamics and promote a participatory culture. Whether through joint projects using AI to generate creative content or through discussion platforms that analyze AI-generated data, collaborative activities enhance learning by leveraging diverse perspectives.

Suggested prompts for group work (Bowen & Watson, 2024):

• Act as our team coach and prompt us with questions to discuss how to learn about our collective strengths and how to work together as an effective team.
• Propose guidelines for how we should work on this team project. (Mollick & Mollick, 2023)
• Outline steps and timeline for completing this project.

(6) Consider innovative, authentic, ongoing approaches to feedback and assessment

As AI changes working and thinking, and AI sets a new baseline for average or adequate (Bowen & Watson, 2024), educators should move away from traditional assessment methods. For example, moving from one or two final essay submissions to more dynamic, adaptive, authentic, and relevant assessment approaches. Rather than relying on AI detection tools, consider using GenAI to create:

• Detailed rubrics
• Step-by-step instructions
• Ongoing feedback mechanisms
• Supportive assessment frameworks

For more information, see module 7.

(7) Take a compassionate approach to understanding why students might use GenAI in an unauthorized manner (Bali, 2024)

Bali suggests that it is critical to take a compassionate approach in order to understand why students might turn to GenAI tools in unauthorized ways.

• Aim to understand students’ motivations and pressures.
• Develop strategies that promote transparent and ethical use of GenAI.
• Encourage educator reflection on the relevance and purpose of learning activities.
• Facilitate open communication with students about their values and integrity, helping them to recognize the expansion of inequalities when using shortcuts and consequences of misuse.

Summary

This module offered educators practical strategies for ethically and mindfully integrating GenAI into their teaching practice. It emphasized the importance of human-centred and compassionate learning design principles in the application of GenAI tools into teaching because, with this approach, we maintain a critical, ethical, inclusive lens that prioritizes our values, learning outcomes, student engagement, and success.

Final Reflective Question

Considering the strategies for enhancing human elements in designing learning with GenAI discussed in this module, which do you find most promising in your context and why?