How can AI become a tool for deeper learning, instead of a shortcut around learning?
AI-inclusive assignments help students engage more critically with emerging technologies by integrating AI tools into the learning process. These assignments promote deeper understanding by encouraging students to analyze, refine, or build upon AI-generated content rather than simply consume it.
An AI-inclusive assignment aims to integrate AI tools in a way that promotes deeper learning and creativity rather than simply enabling AI to complete tasks directly for students.
Develop critical thinking
Enhance problem-solving skills
Promote ethical awareness
Encourage AI-literacy
Six patterns for integrating AI as a learning tool while keeping student thinking at the center.
Have students role-play as specific personas when interacting with AI to add creativity and critical thinking.
Example: Ask AI to explain the same historical event twice—once as a skeptical journalist and once as a loyal government spokesperson. Students compare how tone and emphasis shift, then write which persona surfaced a detail they had overlooked.
Complete assignment examples that implement AI-inclusive strategies with detailed instructions.
Use these policies as suggested syllabus language for AI-inclusive assignments. Copy either into your syllabus and adapt the bracketed details to your course.
Suggested starting language. Personalize for your course. Align any integrity language with your institution's academic integrity policies.
Assignments where using AI, then critiquing it, is the point.
Suggested syllabus language
This assignment requires you to use AI as a tool, then evaluate its output. You must submit your full AI conversation along with your work. Credit is earned through your critique and your AI-free final artifact, not the AI's response itself.
The common real-world case: AI allowed for some parts, not others.
Suggested syllabus language
AI is permitted for [brainstorming and outlining] on this assignment. It may not be used to [write your final draft]. In a brief note at the end, state which tools you used and for what. Undisclosed use will be treated as a violation of academic integrity.
