Integrating Generative AI into Active Learning Activities

While generative AI presents new challenges for teaching, it also offers new avenues for fostering meaningful learning and engagement. In particular, generative AI tools may be incorporated into active learning activities, encouraging students to foster understanding rather than memorization of facts, and providing students with autonomy over their learning. 

This workshop will explore actionable ways for teaching assistants to integrate generative AI into tutorials and labs, so that they may foster students’ critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. It will consider how and when to incorporate generative AI into a tutorial and lab, so that that AI literacy skill-building is introduced slowly and progressively, in alignment with comfort levels and the course-level learning goals. In addition, the session will explore ways to speak with students about generative AI capabilities, limitations, and risks, so that they have a clear understanding of what responsible AI use looks like in practice. 

Throughout the workshop, teaching assistants will engage in hands-on exercises and explore real-world examples of integrating generative AI into classroom interactions. Teaching assistants will critically examine the extent to which generative AI-embedded learning activities may enhance active engagement in their disciplinary contexts, leading students to foster meaningful connections between the course content and their own lives.