Generative AI in your Teaching: Ways to Begin Engaging

Updated 8/23/23 

Looking for advice on how generative AI such as ChatGPT can be leveraged in your course(s)? This guide breaks down several approaches you could take.

Inch forward: Start by understanding

Browse curated resources to help with your syllabus and teaching. Read how generative AI can help to implement research-based instructional approaches.

• Use prompts and vet the output for accuracy and potential usefulness for students.
• Learn from example prompts/output for a materials thermodynamics course.
• Input a pset question to evaluate AI’s response and then ask AI to improve it.
• Review these five strategies and example prompts.

Purposefully engage: Build limited experiences into your course

Start with one concept or a single assignment question. Gather feedback and try again.

• Produce varied examples of a difficult concept. Engage students on a discussion board about commonalities across all examples or to compare/contrast them.
• Generate an explanation for a lecture/recitation, and share it with students with its imperfections. Ask students to fill in the gaps of missing or incorrect information.
• Write questions for low-stakes in-class quizzing for a class section. Have students respond in groups, followed by whole-class discussion.
• Guide students to critically engage AI on assignments. Ask reflective questions on one pset to help students evaluate AI responses and draw connections to class materials.

Scale up: Implement in multiple ways or with larger audience

Build off of successes by using the above strategies repeatedly or across sections, and by including reflective questions in psets or assignments.

Want more information or want to share your approach to using generative AI in teaching? Email ol-residential@mit.edu to get help from the Residential Education team.