Check-Ins to Foster Community and Building Your Students’ AI Toolbox

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL

I recently attended the Lilly Conference on Evidence-Based Teaching and Learning in Traverse City, Michigan. In this blog I will share with you two sessions that could be helpful for your own teaching. The first gives some ideas for simple check-ins with your students that can both build community and promote your students’ mental health. The second offers some useful information about how you can build your students’ AI Toolbox, as well as your own.

Using Check-ins to Foster Community in your Classroom

Doing regular check-ins with your students is very easy, takes little time, and yet can do a lot to create classroom community and improve students’ mental health. Check-ins can be done once a week during the first five minutes of class, as a half-time show, or as a class wrap-up. The focus can be reflection, creating a laughable moment, emotional intelligence, positive affirmations, mindful movement, or goal-setting.  

Here are some examples: 

  • A daily quiz with a silly question (Do you say “soda” or “pop”?)
  • “Victory or Burden.” Have everyone in class respond to one of two questions:  “What is one thing you did this week that was an accomplishment?”  Or “What are you burdened by this week?” Be sure to begin by answering the question yourself.
  • A shared Google doc grid where they anonymously mark where they are on the spectrum from stressed to happy 
  • A poll on how they are feeling. Have everyone start at the same time so it is more anonymous.  You can then share their responses as a word cloud.  If you use Top Hat, the word cloud is embedded.
  • For a 90-minute class: Create a brief halftime show. This can be just a weekly bad joke plus having everyone get up to stretch.
  • A check-in after your first exam:  Ask them: What did you do well that prepared you for this exam? What will you do differently next time?
  • Ask about their favorite snacks and then bring them in one day during a stressful period 

 For just a small investment of classroom time, these check-ins have big benefits that include:

  • Fostering a sense of belonging
  • Bringing students’ outside interests into the classroom
  • Increasing peer acceptance
  • Building social capital

Consider choosing just one of these techniques to begin using in one of your classes next week. You might be surprised at the positive impact on your relationship with your students.

References:

  1. Understanding higher education students’ sense of belonging: a qualitative meta-ethnographic analysis
  2.  Social Belonging Interventions

Presenters: Dr. Stacia Miller, Dr. Suzanne Lindt, and Dr. Christina Janise Wickard, MSU Texas

Building Your Students’ AI Toolbox

This speaker began her talk by providing some startling statistics that demonstrate why faculty need to embrace responsible use of AI by our students:

  • 58% of students feel they do not have sufficient AI knowledge and skills

She received some funding to create a curated list of AI tools for students on her campus. However, she found that the tools are changing so quickly that it is impossible to keep up. Instead, she concluded that it is best to teach students how to judge for themselves which are the best tools. Here are her key considerations for using AI for academic work:

  • Is the tool free or a paid subscription?
  • Is it capable of web scraping, i.e. extracting content and data from websites? 
  • Is the tool “grounded” in an academic corpus? For example, Perplexity has an academic focus, ChatGPT does not.
  • How is the tool using your data? What are the privacy considerations?
  • Use multiple tools and compare results
  • Use AI as an assistant and not a replacement for your own work.  

In her classes she has her students write down examples of how they might use AI, then sort them into categories.  Then they are required to try out four different AI tools and compare them as resources, using the criteria listed above.  Her mantra for her students’ AI use is: Collaborate, don’t Delegate.  

She concluded her talk by sharing her thoughts on AI classroom policy:

I find that a course-level policy is too challenging because AI usage is more nuanced. I don’t want to ban use entirely because there are places where it can be helpful for students, especially in the prewriting stages.  Many students struggle with getting started with writing and AI could be one way to help them get started.  I have used a stoplight system to highlight what tasks are acceptable for AI use and what tools I want students to be using for these tasks.  For example, I want students to use tools capable of web scraping and grounded in scholarly research when doing research.  I want students to use multiple tools when brainstorming and prompting the AI to give them ten ideas rather than just one.  This way they are using the AI in a collaborative way and still doing their own thinking about how to use the information obtained in their work.

Presenter: Laura Roberts, Assistant Teaching Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

FINAL NOTE:  I highly recommend the Lilly Conferences as great places to get evidence-based ideas for improving your teaching. They have annual conferences at five locations, two are within driving distance of Valparaiso.