AI as an Instructional Design Tool

Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, can assist professors in generating comprehensive course outlines by providing topic suggestions and structuring course content. By using some very simple prompts, professors can leverage these tools to organize their course topics into a logical sequence that can vary from foundational concepts to more advanced material. Some things to consider while creating course outlines include the course name, student level, teaching level, topic area, and course type.

Learning Objectives

When it comes to creating learning objectives with an AI tool, one of the first things you may want to do is to align your objectives with a specific taxonomy. For example, by asking the AI to reference Fink's Taxonomy for Significant Learning, you can ensure that the response you get back is one that covers both cognitive and affective goals for your course. Another thing to keep in mind is that getting the AI to produce clearly defined goals can sometimes be tricky. By asking it to avoid non-measurable words like "understand" and by asking it to start at the verb for each goal, you can help refine its responses into something that's more likely move into a final draft of your syllabus. What's interesting is that some of these tools (ChatGPT and Google Gemini) even have a memory feature that will remember your preferences. You can leverage this memory to continue to create objectives for other courses in your preferred style or format.

Course Sequencing and Modules

Generative AI tools can also help professors organize their course content into smaller units and/or modules. When using an AI chatbot to perform such a task, professors should consider their preferences for module length, organization, and scaffolding. For example, are your modules arranged in chronological order, or do they follow the same order as the chapters in your textbook? Do they go by themes or by foundational knowledge and then practical application? Do your modules last two or three days? Do they last a week? How does academic rigor and/or complexity increase over time?

You can start a course sequence from where we left off above by simply asking the AI tool to reference the outline it has already generated. Like the previous example, you can also create a prompt that asks the tool to generate modules based on the parameters you give it. Again, try to include things, such as the course name, student level, and teaching level. You may also want to include your overall course goals or learning objectives.