How to Use Generative AI (without getting in trouble at school)
- Heather Saigo
- Apr 16
- 2 min read
TLDR: Try this interactive lesson to learn how to use generative AI responsibly.
As a college teacher, I interact with students and faculty colleagues from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some are completely comfortable with new technologies, and others are more accustomed to traditional paper-and-pencil activities. Most are somewhere in between. They're able to use email and e-books, can navigate through websites and search engines, but might need extra support with specific features of a learning management system (LMS).
Generative AI Presents Opportunities and Challenges
The explosion of access to generative AI tools has opened a whole new area of opportunity for productivity and misuse. It seems like every platform now offers some kind of AI assistant. You might be familiar with ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Midjourney, and others. These tools promise to save time by generating content for you, so you don't have to work so hard at creating your own. Does AI live up to its promise? It depends.
These tools can be used ethically, although doing so requires some basic understanding of what generative AI can and can't do well. To address this new learning opportunity, and to help students and teachers avoid potential academic integrity problems, I built a short interactive online course: How to Use Generative AI in Academic Settings (without getting in trouble).
The learning objectives:
Identify appropriate scenarios where generative AI can assist in academic work.
Understand the risks associated with reliance on AI tools.
Demonstrate ethical decision-making around the use of generative AI tools.
Appreciate the environmental footprint of generative AI.
Generative AI Interactive Lesson
The lesson includes video with a voiceover (and captions) to introduce generative AI technology. There are flashcards to flip, an interactive scenario to roleplay, card sorting activities (drag and drop), and a couple of multiple choice questions for a knowledge check. I had fun building the activity, and I hope it's more engaging than plain text on a page. It's not exhaustive, since it is meant to be a quick introduction.
Give it a try and share it with a friend who needs to know more about using generative AI for school or work.
How I Used AI for This Project
For this project, I used AI to help brainstorm ideas, outline the course sequence, and find articles to use for background information. I created the video, graphics, voiceover, and content. The tool I use is trained on my own private data (I pay to train the system on my data), as well as publicly available information, so I can customize the output more than you might be able to on an open AI app.
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