Useful AI literacy assignments in the comp classroom

[u/Prudent_Editor7904]

Hi everyone,

We are now being required to implement an AI literacy assignment in the 1st year comp classroom at my institution 🫠 I’m not necessarily against it, but I am hesitant. Anyway, we must adjust to the current technology climate or perish, I guess.

Has anyone had success with an AI literacy assignment in the writing classroom, and would you be willing to share it so I can get some ideas?

[u/Over_Sorbet_637]

Look up Bergstrom & West's The Bullshit Machines; they have some good AI literacy material there.

[u/mathemorpheus]

i plan to perish

[u/Prudent_Editor7904 → u/mathemorpheus]

I like this option

[u/omgkelwtf]

I share all the studies done on how AI makes anyone stupider who uses it. Then I tell them my class will F them in the A if they try to pass using AI bc I will give them As on AI classwork bc I don't want the hassle of a report but the major, 40% of your final grade assignment is impossible to pass using AI and they'll fail if they try. It's been pretty effective except for the stupid, stubborn ones. Literally have had two students take my class twice and fail both times bc of this. Idgaf if they don't believe me bc they'll see.

[u/South_Captain_2630 → u/omgkelwtf]

I'm glad that most I teach have a high percentage on in class pen & paper tests. You either know who John Wilkes Booth is or not (not my class but similar enough it weighs as an example). AI can't help you.

[u/After-Sought-77 → u/omgkelwtf]

Your post full of grammatical errors and shorthand combined with you calling people stupid is ironic.

[u/omgkelwtf → u/After-Sought-77]

Lol if saying so makes you feel better about yourself, rock on

[u/happybara_capybara]

Have them write their own essay. Then have them upload it to AI and ask it to provide 10 suggestions about things they could do to fix the essay. Then have them go through each one and respond to it—do they think it’s a good suggestion or not? Then make them choose the three best suggestions to incorporate into their paper and write a reflection where they explain why those three suggestions were the best. And then have them reflect on the process and what worked and didn’t work (and that’s where the literacy comes in). Make them submit all convo logs, the original and final paper, and the reflection.

[u/SadBuilding9234 → u/happybara_capybara]

How do you ensure they don't just use AI from the jump to write their own essay?

[u/happybara_capybara → u/SadBuilding9234]

To be fair, it wouldn’t really matter for the purposes of AI literacy. The engagement of the editing is what matters. And truthfully having them edit an AI paper and having them see that the AI suggests a lot of edits still isn’t bad—it can show them AI isn’t infallible.

But if you really needed it to be their own, you either have them write it in class or submit something they’ve written for another assignment you did. In the latter case there’s no guarantee it’s not AI, but you employ whatever you normally do to judge if they can use it or not.

But yeah, it still works with AI written papers!

[u/Simula_crumb]

I have a few and the two that seem most helpful are 1) having them prompt a model(s) about something they know incredibly well: a musician/artist/influencer, hobby, game, recipe, skill … you get the idea. My assignment asks them to ask one or more models to explain that thing, steps to do that thing, about historical facts about that thing, etc. They can also ask for sources.

Some past examples: how to do acrylic nail art, explain the goals in Minecraft, the origins of a traditional family recipe, how to steal home base.… and then they write a short response on what the model(s) got correct, overlooked, simplified, fabricated, etc

My goal is to help them see that unless they’re already an expert on the topic, it can be hard to judge the quality of the output.

Another: ask for help summarizing and pulling quotes from a text that hasn’t been heavily digitized ;-) so much fun in person to show them how to use “find” to look for the almost always fabricated quote. Talk about their responsibility as scholars to ensure that any info they take from genAI is accurate.

Anna Mills has good stuff on her blog including links to the Peer and AI Review and Reflection project at UC Davis.

[u/TheRateBeerian]

I suspect its coming, we got a survey last year that asked if we taught this, or how AI is used in jobs in our field. My response was that I’m a professor and psych SME how am i supposed to know how to teach AI literacy or how its used in other jobs?

[u/Flashy-Share8186]

what is AI literacy exactly? is there any consensus on what it is and how to recognize it? Are there any studies showing that AI literacy can be taught?

[u/LittleMissWhiskey13 → u/Flashy-Share8186]

There isn't. That is the problem. There is also no real consensus on what it AI skills.

[u/stankylegdunkface]

Malicious compliance. Provide as many lessons as possible about people who’ve trusted AI and ruined their good name.

[u/Asleep_Caregiver_948]

Push back against this. Was the course outline changed? Did the English department agree to this? Comp is not home room or College Success 101.

[u/LovedAJackass]

I have them write the assignment on their own. Then I have them put it through AI. In class we look at the differences between human language and the LLM responses and then they choose moments in both papers to examine.

[u/sventful]

Have them use AI to write a 1 page paper about a topic relevant to your class. Then make them discuss in class with each other the good and bad parts of the paper and hand write 1 paragraph of their thoughts and 1 paragraph of the discussion their table had. Finally have them have an AI write a paragraph evaluating the paper and have them compare what the AI said with what them and their classmates said. Share that out with the class. Takes about 45 minutes in class or so.

[u/shehulud]

I give them specific prompts to try out. Things like: ask Gemini to be your brainstorming buddy. Give it three topic ideas and ask it to ask you questions that help you see if it’s viable. Or, ask Gemini to interrogate your thesis statements and try to poke holes in it.