AI literacy consists of the ability to understand and use AI technologies effectively. It includes:
- Understanding the basics of AI technology, including different types of AI capabilities and the ethical implications of using AI (e.g., privacy, intellectual property, image manipulation, etc.)
- The ability to responsibly use AI tools to complete tasks
- The ability to critically evaluate and discuss AI technologies
- A willingness to continue learning about and experimenting with AI technologies
To become AI literate, students should be asked to:
- Use AI to execute tasks that augment their thinking and creative processes, rather than short-circuiting them.
- Compare different AI tools and evaluate their strengths for completing different types of tasks and their limitations with regard to issues like bias and accuracy
- Stay current with AI issues and explore the repercussions of the use of AI for society (e.g., work, social life, education, culture, etc.).
- Discuss the ethical implications of using AI tools to accomplish different tasks and identify ways that AI can help or hurt others.
For more information, see Building an AI Literacy Framework: Perspectives from Instruction Librarians and Current Information Literacy Tools.
Assignments That Promote AI Literacy
To develop AI literacy skills, students can do tasks like the following:
- Prompt an AI tool for a list of scholarly sources about a research question. Look up the original sources, determine whether they are real, evaluate whether they useful for answering the question, and determine further sources that are needed.
- Write a summary of an article and compare it to an AI-generated summary. Evaluate strengths and weaknesses of both.
- Prompt an AI tool to summarize a text about a challenging topic. Then generate five follow-up questions that can lead to further understanding of that topic.
- Prompt an AI tool to craft an argument for or against a proposition. Then critique the logic of that argument.
- Write a draft of a short paper arguing for or against a proposition and ask AI to critique it. Address the critiques in subsequent drafts and write a reflection about the process.
- Conduct qualitative analysis of textual data sources (e.g., interviews, websites) by generating themes from this data and comparing them to themes generated by an AI tool. Then consider: How do they compare? Has anything been left out? Are any themes irrelevant?
- Prompt an AI tool to generate different visualizations of quantitative information, critique those visualizations, select those that are most effective in communicating data, and explain what makes the visualizations effective or not.
- Present an AI tool with a job description of interest. Then ask AI to play the role of an interviewer and respond to its questions (orally and in writing), giving you suggestions and feedback about your performance.
- Present an AI tool with a description of a large class assignment, and work with the tool to create a time management and productivity plan for completion.
- Explore two different AI tools and use the ROBOT Test or the VALID-AI test to evaluate and compare them.
- Create working software code to solve a problem. Then ask an AI tool to generate alternative coding solutions and compare them for effectiveness.
- Discuss a recent lawsuit or controversy involving AI. Argue for or against different uses of AI as suggested by the lawsuit or controversy, and describe the implications for society.
This Bloom’s Taxonomy Revisited for AI can provide some food for thought about ways to integrate AI tools into the teaching of skills.
See more assignment ideas at ChatGPT Assignments to Use in Your Classroom Today or AI Teaching Examples.
