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COLL133: Using AI in College (Fall 2025)
I have been teaching AI literacy since Fall 2023, but taught me first course devoted to scaffolding AI literacy and Ethical use of AI in College. The course emphasized using AI to enhance, rather than bypass, desirable difficulty in learning. Students learning to leverage AI as a cognitive tool rather than a shortcut.
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Course Innovations
Interactive Learning Activities
- Study Buddy Speed Dating: Students rotated through 3-minute partnerships to share study challenges, collaboratively brainstorm AI solutions, then demonstrated live AI interactions on the projector
- Video Game Development Competition: Students competed to build working HTML/JavaScript games fastest using AI—everyone using Claude succeeded (Herr Prof barely won!)
- Prompt Engineering Practice: Hands-on exercises with feedback scoring on clarity, context, iteration, and engagement
Student-Facing Resources
- Gamified Study Skills GPT: Custom chatbot teaching learning strategies through XP, levels, and achievements
- Student AI Literacy Guide: Comprehensive resource linked in every live schedule (PDF below)
- Meta-prompt Templates: Structured scaffolds for different AI use cases
Learning Outcomes
Students developed practical AI literacy skills:
- Using AI as a Socratic tutor while maintaining cognitive challenge
- Transcribing handwritten notes for AI-enhanced study (see related entry)
- Ethical brainstorming and idea generation
- Decoding assignment expectations (surprisingly, their most common use case)
- Protecting themselves from false plagiarism accusations through documentation
Assessment Design
Created assignments that required genuine engagement:
- Consciousness exploration exercises using AI to research complex topics, with "score my prompting" feedback (needed to add "be brutally honest" calibration)