Now that you’ve experimented with GenAI tools, let’s address the practical realities of integrating them into your specific teaching context. Every educator’s situation is unique, and understanding both the possibilities and potential challenges will help you make informed decisions about how—or whether—to use these tools.
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Let’s take a moment to reflect here. You might be wondering how these tools or practices will actually fit into your teaching life or your educator life. You might, like me, even beneath a broad and overarching excitement, still maintain very legitimate concerns about accuracy, institutional policies, maintaining the integrity of educational practices, and even environmental impacts. Now, that’s all important and we’ll continue to touch upon all of those things, but here’s what I’ve learned from educators from across many disciplines that are working with AI. The most thoughtful AI adoption happens when you start with intentionality, and that intentionality could be about teaching challenges, could be about teacher to student interaction, could even be about how to use this technology with the least amount of damage to the environment.
The key there is that it doesn’t start with the technology itself. It starts with the critical thinking process, and that usually starts with questions about what you wanna accomplish. So what aspects of your work could benefit from collaborative brainstorming? Where could you use a thinking partner to explore different approaches to a learning process or an activity? What tasks would you benefit from having multiple perspectives or options to consider? And also, what tasks with multiple perspectives or options would your students benefit from? And how will AI handle specialized or even esoteric subjects? For some educators, it’s about generating variations on quiz questions to create more robust assessments. For others, it’s exploring different ways to explain complex concepts or creating different discussion scenarios that help students engage with difficult topics like my earlier argument topic example. Some use AI to help think through how to respond to common student questions or brainstorm different approaches to course organization. Again, the possibilities seem endless, but it’s the intentionality behind the possibility that’s most important.
What GenAI Tools Do Well
GenAI excels at tasks that involve generating, organizing, and adapting content. Here are proven applications that educators are already using successfully:
Administrative Efficiency
- Creating summaries from lecture transcripts or long documents
- Generating organized meeting notes with clear action points
- Drafting email responses to common student questions
- Developing assessment rubrics and grading criteria
Teaching Content Creation
- Writing clear definitions of key terminology for your discipline
- Creating discussion scenarios and case studies
- Generating quiz questions and flashcards for concept review
- Adapting existing materials for different student levels
Common Concerns and How to Address Them
- “I’m worried about accuracy.” Start with low-stakes tasks like brainstorming or first drafts. Always review and verify AI-generated content before using it with students.
- “My institution doesn’t have clear policies.” Focus on using AI for your own productivity (lesson planning, administrative tasks) while policies develop. Be transparent with colleagues about your experimentation.
- “I teach a specialized subject.” GenAI may not have deep expertise in niche fields, but it can still help with general teaching tasks like creating discussion formats, organizing content, or explaining concepts in simpler terms.
- “I don’t want to replace human creativity.” Use AI as a starting point or collaborator, not a replacement. Think of it as getting a “first draft” that you then improve with your expertise and pedagogical knowledge.
Discipline-Specific Adaptations
- STEM Fields: Use AI to create problem scenarios, generate example datasets, or explain complex concepts in accessible language.
- Humanities: Leverage AI for discussion prompts, comparative analyzes, or creating historical scenarios while maintaining critical evaluation of sources.
- Professional Programs: Generate realistic case studies, industry scenarios, or ethical dilemmas relevant to your field.
Start Small
Rather than overhauling your entire teaching approach, consider adopting what Ethan Mollick calls “5 small steps for AI skeptics.” Begin with one simple task—perhaps generating discussion questions for next week’s class—and build from there based on your comfort level and results.
- Darby, F. (2024, October 30). 5 small steps for AI Skeptics: Getting academics to teach with tools like ChatGPT is proving to be a tough nut to crack. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
- One Useful Thing: Trying to understand the implications of AI for work, education, and life. Substack by Prof. Ethan Mollick
Discussions
What's one specific barrier or concern you have about using GenAI in your context, and how might you address it?
Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments section below.