Malgorzata Bakalarz-Duverger
Generative AI in Teaching, for Parsons First-Year Integrated Seminar 1 & 2
In this course, students will be introduced to a diverse range of texts (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, journalism, theory) in order to consider the expressive possibilities of language. Class discussions will examine how writing conveys ideas and emotions. They will also make room for students’ voice to enter into larger critical and creative conversations. At the heart of the integrative model is the connection to students’ Integrative Studio class. The goal is to make reading, writing and critical thinking essential components of the art, design and strategic thinking processes.
Faculty Reflection
A lot of students don’t use LLMs in an interactive way: it’s usually a “serve and respond” service, i.e. a quick and definitive answer that students expect from their engagement with gen AI – not the process. An opportunity to engage in a dialogical process and explore diverse options to their answers, make decisions about the answers they prefer, iterate ideas – this was something new and considered helpful. Students want to better understand the terminology related to the AI, machine learning etc. They want to understand what they talk about when they talk about AI – it increases their confidence when they have tools and vocabulary in the field. It also increases the quality of conversations about AI in their professional field, demythologizing some of their fears. Students also want to grapple more with the ethical and ecological consequences of the genAI use. I had a student who refused to use ChatGPT because he had heard that it is really damaging for the environment. It prompted an interesting discussion about the “invisible impact” of technology in general and how we can respond to it.
The future of AI scares a lot of students. An open discussion about how they can stay relevant in their respective creative sectors and how their college experience can stay relevant in preparing them to the job market – it is critical among the faculty and should be included in the syllabi, orientations, etc.
I teach freshmen and I can see the need to step back and pay more attention to the critical thinking skills and information literacy in my courses – not to take them for granted anymore. It was clear that asking questions, extrapolating, reasoning were the skills that students struggle with. It also reflected their capacity to engage with LLMs and use the tools productively (prompting, receiving feedback, iterating ideas). Brief rationale for choices made I decided not to do research with genAI, as the research skills are still an important component of students’ education. Also, AI hallucination is still a real risk in the research process. Probably next year it will be fine-tuned to the extent that will enable the process. It was important for me to make the process of working with AI transparent, so we spent some time discussing the AI-related assignments and reflecting on how they could be useful across courses and/or in professional life. We were wrapping up each assignment with a discussion and additionally I organized a short survey at the end of the semester, asking students about their experience and possible paths for more exploration in the future. An important part of the process was learning about AI: students appreciated the time we spent on just exploring the mechanics of machine learning and AI tools. Equipped with knowledge and vocabulary, students were more ready to grapple with their concerns regarding the future of their creative practice on job markets. This was the topic that was extremely important to them. I didn’t allocate enough time for the reflection on the ethics of AI, and students mentioned in the survey that it was a topic they would like to explore more.
Curriculum
Developing a Conceptual Proposal
As an assignment, in which students had to create an image that would illustrate their conceptual proposal of a “missing” advertising category, students were to expand the Ervin Goffman’s catalogue of “gendered advertisements”.
Visual Commentaries Reevaluation
As an opportunity to discuss their intentionality (linguistic choices and the structure of their arguments) in the Visual Commentary assignment, students submitted their visual commentaries and then in class, they prompted ChatGPT to edit their visual commentaries to reflect a more formal or a more poetic style – and explored if their initial argument/intention would still come across.
Developing Curatorial Ideas
As an opportunity to peer-review and brainstorm their ideas while working with their curatorial proposal drafts, students were collaborating with ChatGPT or Claude on developing their curatorial ideas and reviewed recommendations