Event description
In this seminar, I want to motivate why Generative AI (GAI) is a fantastic tool to address the following problem: "How can I learn as much as possible in as little time as possible and with as little effort as possible?" All students should be interested in solutions to this problem, as they are at university to learn. Educators should also be interested, as GAI enables them to design teaching setups that optimise student learning.
The motivations are primarily based on practical experience from iteratively integrating GAI in my course and my eaching since 2023. Before last year's course, roughly 40% of the 3rd to 5th year students self-reported as beginners or basic users, 40% as intermediate and 20% as advanced users of GAI tools. The fact that 40% of students in an advanced course are beginners or basic users highlights that there is a gap between technical access and pedagogical literacy - a gap that should be closed. I explicitly taught my students about GAI use and roughly 75% of the students found it useful - the remaining 25% were primarily those students who were already advanced users of GAI before the course.
My teaching of GAI explicitly focused on how to use it as a learning tool. My students became capable of asking GAI for feedback during the course - feedback that I do not have the resources to give, feedback that is available 24/7 (also at 3 a.m.) and, most importantly, feedback that they can get immediately when they have a problem or question. It also encouraged them to continuously use GAI to learn more and explore aspects that were interesting to each individual student - this way they were actively working with the material instead of passively digesting it. My students also started using GAI for exam preparation throughout the course.
The most important lesson? That GAI is not "a free lunch"! There is no substitute for good, old-fashioned foundational knowledge (Bloom's levels 1-2) - without it, students cannot make an informed judgement about GAI's output and are reduced to trusting it blindly, which is dangerous. However, given that foundational knowledge, GAI can help propel students towards "Bloom heaven" (levels 3-6), enabling higher-order thinking.
The seminar will therefore argue not simply that students should use GAI, but that we should teach them how to use it for learning - and design our courses so that GAI strengthens rather than short-circuits the learning process.