Ohio State nav bar
The Ohio State University
- BuckeyeLink
- Find People
- Search Ohio State
AI Teaching Strategies: Transparent Assignment Design
The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Jasper Chat raises many questions about the ways we teach and the ways students learn. While some of these questions concern how we can use AI to accomplish learning goals and whether or not that is advisable, others relate to how we can facilitate critical analysis of AI itself.
The wide variety of questions about AI and the rapidly changing landscape of available tools can make it hard for educators to know where to start when designing an assignment. When confronted with new technologies—and the new teaching challenges they present—we can often turn to existing evidence-based practices for the guidance we seek.
This guide will apply the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework to "un-complicate" planning an assignment that uses AI, providing guiding questions for you to consider along the way.
The result should be an assignment that supports you and your students to approach the use of AI in a more thoughtful, productive, and ethical manner.
Plan your assignment.
The TILT framework offers a straightforward approach to assignment design that has been shown to improve academic confidence and success, sense of belonging, and metacognitive awareness by making the learning process clear to students (Winkelmes et al., 2016). The TILT process centers around deciding—and then communicating—three key components of your assignment: 1) purpose, 2) tasks, and 3) criteria for success.
Step 1: Define your purpose.
To make effective use of any new technology, it is important to reflect on our reasons for incorporating it into our courses. In the first step of TILT, we think about what we want students to gain from an assignment and how we will communicate that purpose to students.
The SAMR model , a useful tool for thinking about educational technology use in our courses, lays out four tiers of technology integration. The tiers, roughly in order of their sophistication and transformative power, are S ubstitution, A ugmentation, M odification, and R edefinition. Each tier may suggest different approaches to consider when integrating AI into teaching and learning activities.
Questions to consider:
- Do you intend to use AI as a substitution, augmentation, modification, or redefinition of an existing teaching practice or educational technology?
- What are your learning goals and expected learning outcomes?
- Do you want students to understand the limitations of AI or to experience its applications in the field?
- Do you want students to reflect on the ethical implications of AI use?
Bloom’s Taxonomy is another useful tool for defining your assignment’s purpose and your learning goals and outcomes.
This downloadable Bloom’s Taxonomy Revisited resource , created by Oregon State University, highlights the differences between AI capabilities and distinctive human skills at each Bloom's level, indicating the types of assignments you should review or change in light of AI. Bloom's Taxonomy Revisited is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Access a transcript of the graphic .
Step 2: Define the tasks involved.
In the next step of TILT, you list the steps students will take when completing the assignment. In what order should they do specific tasks, what do they need to be aware of to perform each task well, and what mistakes should they avoid? Outlining each step is especially important if you’re asking students to use generative AI in a limited manner. For example, if you want them to begin with generative AI but then revise, refine, or expand upon its output, make clear which steps should involve their own thinking and work as opposed to AI’s thinking and work.
- Are you designing this assignment as a single, one-time task or as a longitudinal task that builds over time or across curricular and co-curricular contexts? For longitudinal tasks consider the experiential learning cycle (Kolb, 1984) . In Kolb’s cycle, learners have a concrete experience followed by reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. For example, students could record their generative AI prompts, the results, a reflection on the results, and the next prompt they used to get improved output. In subsequent tasks students could expand upon or revise the AI output into a final product. Requiring students to provide a record of their reflections, prompts, and results can create an “AI audit trail,” making the task and learning more transparent.
- What resources and tools are permitted or required for students to complete the tasks involved with the assignment? Make clear which steps should involve their own thinking (versus AI-generated output, for example), required course materials, and if references are required. Include any ancillary resources students will need to accomplish tasks, such as guidelines on how to cite AI , in APA 7.0 for example.
- How will you offer students flexibility and choice? As of this time, most generative AI tools have not been approved for use by Ohio State, meaning they have not been vetted for security, privacy, or accessibility issues . It is known that many platforms are not compatible with screen readers, and there are outstanding questions as to what these tools do with user data. Students may have understandable apprehensions about using these tools or encounter barriers to doing so successfully. So while there may be value in giving students first-hand experience with using AI, it’s important to give them the choice to opt out. As you outline your assignment tasks, plan how to provide alternative options to complete them. For example, could you provide AI output you’ve generated for students to work with, demonstrate use of the tool during class, or allow use of another tool that enables students to meet the same learning outcomes?
Microsoft Copilot and Adobe Firefly are currently the only generative AI tools that have been vetted and approved for use at Ohio State. Copilot is an AI-powered chatbot that draws from public online data, giving you access to better answers and greater efficiency, but with additional security measures in place. Adobe Firefly is a generative AI engine that aims to support and augment your creative work. You can use Firefly to generate and enhance images, edit objects, and more. Learn more about approved AI tools at Ohio State.
- What are your expectations for academic integrity? This is a helpful step for clarifying your academic integrity guidelines for this assignment, around AI use specifically as well as for other resources and tools. The standard Academic Integrity Icons in the table below can help you call out what is permissible and what is prohibited. If any steps for completing the assignment require (or expressly prohibit) AI tools, be as clear as possible in highlighting which ones, as well as why and how AI use is (or is not) permitted.
Permitted | Not permitted | Potential Rationale |
---|---|---|
[is] [is ] permitted. | ||
[is] [is ] permitted. | ||
[is] [is ] permitted. | ||
for the assignment [is] [is ] permitted and encouraged. | ||
on the assignment [is] [is ] permitted. | ||
for the assignment [is] [is ] permitted. |
Promoting academic integrity
While inappropriate use of AI may constitute academic misconduct, it can be muddy for students to parse out what is permitted or prohibited across their courses and across various use cases. Fortunately, there are existing approaches to supporting academic integrity that apply to AI as well as to any other tool. Discuss academic integrity openly with students, early in the term and before each assignment. Purposefully design your assignments to promote integrity by using real-world formats and audiences, grading the process as well as the product, incorporating personal reflection tasks, and more.
Learn about taking a proactive, rather than punitive, approach to academic integrity in A Positive Approach to Academic Integrity.
Step 3: Define criteria for success.
An important feature of transparent assignments is that they make clear to students how their work will be evaluated. During this TILT step, you will define criteria for a successful submission—consider creating a rubric to clarify these expectations for students and simplify your grading process. If you intend to use AI as a substitute or augmentation for another technology, you might be able to use an existing rubric with little or no change. However, if AI use is modifying or redefining the assignment tasks, a new grading rubric will likely be needed.
- How will you grade this assignment? What key criteria will you assess?
- What indicators will show each criterion has been met?
- What qualities distinguish a successful submission from one that needs improvement?
- Will you grade students on the product only or on aspects of the process as well? For example, if you have included a reflection task as part of the assignment, you might include that as a component of the final grade.
Alongside your rubric, it is helpful to prepare examples of successful (and even unsuccessful) submissions to provide more tangible guidance to students. In addition to samples of the final product, you could share examples of effective AI prompts, reflections tasks, and AI citations. Examples may be drawn from previous student work or models that you have mocked up, and they can be annotated to highlight notable elements related to assignment criteria.
Present and discuss your assignment.
As clear as we strive to be in our assignment planning and prompts, there may be gaps or confusing elements we have overlooked. Explicitly going over your assignment instructions—including the purpose, key tasks, and criteria—will ensure students are equipped with the background and knowledge they need to perform well. These discussions also offer space for students to ask questions and air unanticipated concerns, which is particularly important given the potential hesitance some may have around using AI tools.
- How will this assignment help students learn key course content, contribute to the development of important skills such as critical thinking, or support them to meet your learning goals and outcomes?
- How might students apply the knowledge and skills acquired in their future coursework or careers?
- In what ways will the assignment further students’ understanding and experience around generative AI tools, and why does that matter?
- What questions or barriers do you anticipate students might encounter when using AI for this assignment?
As noted above, many students are unaware of the accessibility, security, privacy, and copyright concerns associated with AI, or of other pitfalls they might encounter working with AI tools. Openly discussing AI’s limitations and the inaccuracies and biases it can create and replicate will support students to anticipate barriers to success on the assignment, increase their digital literacy, and make them more informed and discerning users of technology.
Explore available resources It can feel daunting to know where to look for AI-related assignment ideas, or who to consult if you have questions. Though generative AI is still on the rise, a growing number of useful resources are being developed across the teaching and learning community. Consult our other Teaching Topics, including AI Considerations for Teaching and Learning , and explore other recommended resources such as the Learning with AI Toolkit and Exploring AI Pedagogy: A Community Collection of Teaching Reflections.
If you need further support to review or develop assignment or course plans in light of AI, visit our Help forms to request a teaching consultation .
Using the Transparent Assignment Template
Sample assignment: ai-generated lesson plan.
In many respects, the rise of generative AI has reinforced existing best practices for assignment design—craft a clear and detailed assignment prompt, articulate academic integrity expectations, increase engagement and motivation through authentic and inclusive assessments. But AI has also encouraged us to think differently about how we approach the tasks we ask students to undertake, and how we can better support them through that process. While it can feel daunting to re-envision or reformat our assignments, AI presents us with opportunities to cultivate the types of learning and growth we value, to help students see that value, and to grow their critical thinking and digital literacy skills.
Using the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework to plan assignments that involve generative AI can help you clarify expectations for students and take a more intentional, productive, and ethical approach to AI use in your course.
- Step 1: Define your purpose. Think about what you want students to gain from this assignment. What are your learning goals and outcomes? Do you want students to understand the limitations of AI, see its applications in your field, or reflect on its ethical implications? The SAMR model and Bloom's Taxonomy are useful references when defining your purpose for using (or not using) AI on an assignment.
- Step 2: Define the tasks involved. L ist the steps students will take to complete the assignment. What resources and tools will they need? How will students reflect upon their learning as they proceed through each task? What are your expectations for academic integrity?
- Step 3: Define criteria for success. Make clear to students your expectations for success on the assignment. Create a rubric to call out key criteria and simplify your grading process. Will you grade the product only, or parts of the process as well? What qualities indicate an effective submission? Consider sharing tangible models or examples of assignment submissions.
Finally, it is time to make your assignment guidelines and expectations transparent to students. Walk through the instructions explicitly—including the purpose, key tasks, and criteria—to ensure they are prepared to perform well.
- Checklist for Designing Transparent Assignments
- TILT Higher Ed Information and Resources
- Artificial Intelligence at Ohio State
Winkelmes, M. (2013). Transparency in Teaching: Faculty Share Data and Improve Students’ Learning. Liberal Education 99 (2).
Wilkelmes, M. (2013). Transparent Assignment Design Template for Teachers. TiLT Higher Ed: Transparency in Learning and Teaching. https://tilthighered.com/assets/pdffiles/Transparent%20Assignment%20Templates.pdf
Winkelmes, M., Bernacki, M., Butler, J., Zochowski, M., Golanics, J., Weavil, K. (2016). A Teaching Intervention that Increases Underserved College Students’ Success. Peer Review.
Related Teaching Topics
Ai considerations for teaching and learning, ai teaching strategies: having conversations with students, designing assessments of student learning, search for resources.
Designing Assignments and Activities with ChatGPT and Generative AI in Mind
Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini, can help engage students in learning and creativity. Essentially, generative AI tools create content on their own without human intervention. They can be useful for writing text, generating ideas, creating images, writing and editing code, and more.
By designing assignments that incorporate generative AI technology, instructors can provide students with opportunities to explore, create, and problem-solve. However, as an instructor, you may also want to create assignments that challenge students to demonstrate their own knowledge and skills without relying heavily on AI-generated content. In this article, we will review different assignment ideas and strategies to create prompts and assignment ideas in different disciplines.
If you are interested in more general information about AI Tools and using them in your academic work, visit the Using ChatGPT and AI for Efficient Teaching and Work article. These tools will be shared in the Designing Assignments workshop.
Table of Contents
Syllabus statements and student input, is ai use cheating.
- AI Detection
- Design Assignments to Limit AI Use
- Design Assignments to Work with AI
- Registration
- Recording from August, 2023
- Workshop Slides
Intelligent.com conducted a poll of more than 1,000 current college students in May 2023 regarding their use of ChatGPT for coursework. 30% of students used ChatGPT for coursework during the 2022/2023 academic year, and of that group, 46% utilized it frequently. The Digital Education Council just did a survey finding that 86% of students state they use AI in their studies and 54% use it at least weekly. Generative AI is rapidly advancing and becoming more prevalent in education, work, and our daily lives. As an educator, it’s a good idea to help students be aware of the ethical considerations surrounding the use of generative AI.
- Consider adding an acceptable use statement in your syllabus. Here are some guidelines and examples.
- How do you think generative AI can be applied to the course assignments in this class?
- Can you share any specific examples of generative AI being used in educational settings?
- How can we ensure that AI tools are used in a way that promotes skill development in our course?
- After reviewing the assignment directions and grading information, what would be some helpful uses of AI tools that will still allow you to learn the content and demonstrate your learning?
- Based on various surveys and instructor experiences, not all students believe it is ethical to use AI on assignments. Be sure to include a discussion/policy about how AI can or cannot be used in group work.
There is no standard for determining if AI use by students qualifies as plagiarism or cheating . There is also no consistent standard for citing or crediting work using an AI tool. It may be useful to check with your professional organizations and journals and share any of their policies with students. Currently, AI is part of retail and other business careers, education in personalized learning, systems that make recommendations, human resources decisions, healthcare, agriculture, gaming, marketing, finance, and more .
Organization and publication examples:
- RTDNA Journalism Association
- NIH Grants Peer Review Policy
- IEEE Journal Submission Policy
Citation Style Guidance:
- APA: How to Cite ChatGPT
- MLA: How Do I Cite Generative AI in MLA Style?
- Chicago Style Manual
It may be useful to reflect on how you define plagiarism and cheating and then help guide students to think about it. Review this image from Matt Miller @DitchThatTextbook to help guide your thinking.
No True Detection of AI is Possible
There is no “fool-proof” way to detect AI use in student projects, and there have been many stories published about false positives and negatives using various AI detectors.
At NC State University, we provide access to Turnitin, but we do not pay for access to the AI detector due to false positives being reported at universities across the country. Please review the academic integrity guidance and policies from the Office of Student Conduct.
AI detection and workaround programs are regularly created and released. Here are some common tools and videos that guide students and content creators on how to avoid AI detection.
- Writer AI Content Detector ( Disclaimer )
- Scribbr AI Detector
- ContentDetector.AI
- Sapling AI Detector
- AI Content Detector Writer
- AI Writing CheckWriter’s AI Content Detector
- GPTZero X (detects text complexity and “burstiness” limited free option)
- $$ Winston AI’s Detection Tool (free trial)
- $$ Copyleaks (monthly fee – free trial)$$ Originality.AI (free trial)
- Video from Andy Stapleton: The Easiest Way to Bypass AI Content Detection
- Video: Bypass ALL AI Detectors in 2024
There are also some red flags you can look for in reviewing student work. It’s helpful (albeit difficult in large classes) if you know your students writing and can determine if an assignment does not fit their typical way or level of writing. What to look for:
- A factual error or made-up citation
- Missing required assignment data sources or article text
- “Too perfect” in terms of grammar and usage
- Overly formal, detached, or impersonal style/tone
- Predictable formations – -like a five-paragraph essay from middle school language arts
- The writing too directly and repetitively parallels the assignment directions
Note: Students who are good at prompt writing and provide context, follow-up questions, a voice for the AI, etc., may not produce writing that exhibits these flaws. You may also want to consider having a conversation with a student about their work and topic if you have concerns. ChatGPT-4o (a paid option) is significantly better at avoiding these style issues.
Designing Assignments to Limit AI Usage
There are ways to design assignments that can make generative AI use more difficult for students. However, as tools become more sophisticated, assignment revisions may not be enough to truly prevent students from using AI; however, these strategies are a good start.
Ask ChatGPT
Ask ChatGPT or another AI generator to provide assignment examples in your field that would be difficult for it to complete. Include context, specific learning outcomes, and more to get a more specific list of suggestions. Here are examples from ChatGPT , Perplexity and Google Gemini . Prompt Example:
- You are a professor for an introductory course in {subject area} at the college level. You are trying to design assignments that would be tricky for students to use AI to complete. What are some assignment ideas and topics within the field that would be difficult for you or another Generative AI tool to complete successfully?
- You are a professor for a college statistics course. Students are expected to recognize and be able to explain the central role of variability in the field of statistics. They also must be able to find variability when interpreting data. What are some course assignments that students can complete to show they have met these objectives and that are difficult for ChatGPT to complete? Explain how the assignment will help students demonstrate their understanding and what makes it complicated for a generative AI tool like ChatGPT. See the results here!
You can also copy work into an AI Generator and ask it “Did you write this?” to get some interesting responses.
Google Version History
Require that students submit written work using Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc., and use version history to validate that the writing and input occurred over time vs. in large chunks suggesting that students may have copied and pasted from another source like ChatGPT. Students have also used time stamps in Google Docs version history to exonerate themselves from false positives picked up by AI detectors.
Incorporate Student Discussion and Collaboration
In-person student discussions referencing past class activities, readings done outside of class, previous lectures, and so on can be integrated into your course. Examples:
- Ask students in a chemistry course to compare and contrast two models they read about for homework or that you shared in a recorded lecture. Ask students to come up with examples in class (or on a discussion board) with a partner based on the reading assignment.
- Use Perusall and set the auto-grading (ai-assisted) feature to highly weight active engagement time and getting responses. Manually grade and let students know that credit comes from their in-text conversations with each other.
Reflective Assignments
AI tools are not truly reflective and aren’t likely (even fictionally) to make good connections between course content and personal experience or learnings. Examples:
- Write a reflection on a time when you struggled with a {subject area} concept. What was the concept? How did you eventually understand it? What advice would you give to other students who are struggling with the same concept?
- Compare and contrast two different ways of solving a problem {in your content area}. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each method? When would you use one method over the other?
Real-World & Localized Connections in Assignments
Some AI tools are not connected to the internet and will not have an understanding of local references or the most recent sources. Others may not be able to draw connections that make sense to humans who understand those “smaller” contexts. For example, we asked ChatGPT 4o to write a story for a blog about Raleigh restaurants and include favorites of NC State Students and how social media marketing campaigns have influenced the success of these restaurants. In the response, ChatGPT included only one restaurant on Hillsborough Street and one within walking distance of campus.
A Localized Prompt example:
- Analyze the impact of a recent policy change {content-specific} or ask students to choose a policy change that has been implemented in the last year. Research the policy change and its implications for the economy. Write a report that includes the expected impact, strengths and weaknesses of the change, and recommendations for how the policy change could be improved.
Take Assignments through a Process
Asking students to complete an assignment with a process including steps like brainstorming, mapping, drafting, peer review, an interview, and a final product can make it difficult for them to find successful ways to use AI. It may be able to help students with sections of the assignment but not the entire product or process. You can also ask students process-oriented questions along the way. You can also include ambiguous questions or those that require positions on controversial topics. Examples:
- Compare your answers to your team’s answers. Discuss any differences.
- Explain the process you followed to arrive at your conclusion.
- Analyze the ethical implications of each step in the process and propose alternatives if necessary.
- Explain the long-term consequences of implementing this process and how they might evolve over time.
- Discuss the role of creativity and innovation in…
- Identify potential biases, assumptions, and problems that could arise and suggest methods to mitigate them.
Retrieval Practice Activities
Retrieval practice activities allow students to practice recalling information from class activities, lectures, readings, and so on. If specific to course content, AI would not be helpful in these activities (particularly if completed in person). More on retrieval practice .
Multi-Step with a Creative Component
Create projects in which students demonstrate their learning. Essentially find ways to ask them to take what they’ve learned, organize it, and make something with it. Video is also still difficult for AI tools to create (or at least for free or inexpensive AI tools) Examples:
- Short story writing in which students must use content information, specific vocabulary, and maybe even primary sources to craft a story.
- Ask students to create a comic strip based on a concept, vocabulary, a reading, etc.
- Students creating a public service announcement video to demonstrate learning
Use Visuals in Assessments or Questions Starters
It is more difficult to use a generative AI tool to analyze and respond to images and videos. Consider adding these modalities into your questioning strategies.
Hybrid/Blended Instruction or Flipping
You may also want to consider using hybrid/blended or flipped formats for your course to limit AI use. In this model, students would learn content outside of class time and then use class time to apply or be assessed on what they learned.
Interactive lectures and readings Quizzes for learning Practice activities Preparation for class discussions Preparation for class presentations | Class discussions, Think-Pair-Share Retrieval activities Group project work Presentations Case study work Reflection Assessment – including oral exams |
Assessment Hack/Trick
Instructors have shared the “Trojan Horse” method to “catch” students who copy-paste assignment directions into AI generators and then copy/paste responses into their essays or other assignment submissions. To the authors of this article, working to be the “AI Police” and catch students feels outside of the role of an instructor, but this article explains the method.
Designing Assignments to Work with AI
AI tools are likely to be used by students in future careers and likely in their coursework, so one approach is to incorporate the tools directly and intentionally into assignments and activities.
“Am I going to teach students to write or to write with AI tools like ChatGPT? Derek Bruff
Consider these assignment reflection questions from Derek Bruff’s article “Assignment Makeovers in the AI Age.”
- Why does this assignment make sense for this course?
- What are the specific learning objectives for this assignment?
- How might students use AI tools while working on this assignment?
- How might AI undercut the goals of this assignment? How could you mitigate this?
- How might AI enhance the assignment? Where would students need help figuring that out?
- Focus on the process. How could you make the assignment more meaningful for students or support them more in the work?
Consider these ideas for assignments that can work with AI tools:
- Ask an AI to write an essay/write code/draw an image/create a script/design an experiment/draft a press release/propose a new business/analyze data
- Evaluate the results. Make a list of errors or how this result could have been better.
- Adjust your prompt to improve the output.
- Which result is best and why? What was your strategy to improve the prompt?
- Take the best output and make it even better with human editing. (Track changes)
- Describe for an employer what value you added to this process.
- Use AI to generate multiple explanations for a concept and ask students to critique the AI-generated explanations. Ask them to cite/use specific course readings, notes from lectures, etc., in their critiques.
- Save time in reviewing student writing by asking them or requiring them first to get an AI review of their work, then reflect on the review, make edits, and then submit their final work.
- Include an AI tool in a “Think-Pair-Share” activity in class. Students pair with another person in class and then with an AI tool.
- Ask students to predict what responses they will get from AI to specific course content questions, problem sets, etc.
- Provide several responses from AI and ask students to make a better or different product using those drafts/responses. They might make a mind map from a narrative created by AI and then find three additional sources to support or expand on different sections of the mind map.
- Assign a peer teaching project in which students will teach a concept or review a concept for their peers. Encourage students to get help from AI with the content and in designing a short activity that can be done as part of the peer teaching. Make students responsible for answering questions from peers and instructors. Use any gaps to adjust your own teaching.
- Ask students to debate an AI tool — students on one side and ChatGPT on the other.
- Ask students to find evidence for an AI-created “main points” of an article. First, copy and paste an article into ChatGPT (or a link to an article into Bing or Bard) and ask the tool to summarize the key points of the article. Then provide that to students and ask them to find quotes or details that expand on each point.
NC State Office of Faculty Excellence: Navigating the Landscape of Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Join the NC State AI in Teaching and Learning Community
Background Articles and Popularity/Use of Generative AI
- What Students Want When It Comes To AI ( article based on the same survey )
- 56% of College Students Have Used AI on Assignments or Exams | BestColleges
- Generative AI: What Is It, Tools, Models, Applications and Use Cases
- What is the future of Generative AI? | McKinsey
- What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? | IBM
- Generative AI: How It Works and Recent Transformative Developments
- Navigating Generative AI as an Older Worker
- Pros and Cons of AI in Higher Education | BestColleges
- Educause Review: Artificial Intelligence
- Impact Research: K-12 Teachers & Students ChatGPT Use
- An introduction to prompting generative AI like ChatGPT for teaching and learning
- Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning (PDF)
Education AI Tool Articles/Lists
- 5 free AI tools for school that students, teachers, and parents can use, too | ZDNET
- Academic Success Tip: Infusing AI into Curricular Offerings
- Explore insights from the AI in Education Report | Microsoft Education Blog
- 40 AI Tools for the Classroom
- A Framework for AI Literacy
- Bloom’s Taxonomy Revisited with AI Capabilities
Practical Teaching Tips and Ideas! Key Educators to Follow, Read and Watch
- Writing Instructors –> Tim Laquintano, Carly Schnitzler, and Annette Vee — TextGenEd: An Introduction to Teaching With Text Generation Technologies (Assignment examples for AI Literacy, Creative Explorations, Ethical Considerations, and more – access at the bottom of the article)
- Writing Instructors –> Anna Mills (Curator). AI Text Generators and Teaching Writing: Starting Points For Inquiry
- One Useful Thing
- Assigning AI: Seven Ways of Using AI in Class and The Homework Apocalypse
- Ethan Mollick & Lilach Mollich – Using AI to Implement Effective Teaching Strategies in Classrooms: Five Strategies, Including Prompts
- Lance Cummings: Cyborgs Writing
- Andy Stapleton: Andy Stapleton – YouTube
- Agile Learning
- Assignment Makeovers in the AI Age: Essay Edition
- Assignment Makeovers in the AI Age: Reading Response Edition
- Teaching Naked AI Handouts
- Teaching Naked AI Assignments and Assessments
- Teaching with AI (book)
- Ditch That Textbook: AI Resources
- As a History Professor, This Is How I Use AI in Class
- Jeffrey Young — EdSurge Instructors Rush to Do ‘Assignment Makeovers’ to Respond to ChatGPT”
- Tyler Cowen & Alexander Tabarook How to Learn & Teach Economics with Large Language Models, Including GPT
- Sam Lau & Philip Guo Teaching Programming in the Age of ChatGPT – O’Reilly
- Rethinking your Problem Sets in the World of Generative AI – MIT
Citation, Ethics and Detectors
- Should I Cite the AI Tool that I Used? – Moxie
- The Best AI Detection Tools to Catch Cheating and Plagiarism | BestColleges
- AI Writing Detection: Red Flags
- Torrey Trust — Essential Considerations for Addressing the Possibility of AI-Driven Cheating, Part 1 | Faculty Focus
- Join Our Listserv
- Request a Consult
- Search Penn's Online Offerings
- Assignment Design: Is AI In or Out?
Generative AI
- Rachel Hoke
This page provides examples for designing AI out of or into your assignments. These ideas are intended to provide a starting point as you consider how assignment design can limit or encourage certain uses of AI to help students learn. CETLI is available to consult with you about ways you might design AI out of or into your assignments.
Considerations for Crafting Assignments
- Connect to your goals. Assignments support the learning goals of your course, and decisions about how students may or may not use AI should be based on these goals.
- Designing ‘in’ doesn’t mean ‘all in’. Incorporating certain uses of AI into an assignment doesn’t mean you have to allow all uses, especially those that would interfere with learning.
- Communicate to students . Think about how you will explain the assignment’s purpose and benefits to your students, including the rationale for your guidelines on AI use.
Design Out: Limit AI Use
Very few assignments are truly AI-proof, but some designs are more resistant to student AI use than others. Along with designing assignments in ways that deter the use of AI, inform students about your course AI policies regarding what is and is not acceptable as well as the potential consequences for violating these terms.
Assignments that ask students to refer to something highly specific to your course or not easily searchable online will make it difficult for AI to generate a response. Examples include asking students to:
- Summarize, discuss, question, or otherwise respond to content from an in-class activity, a specific part of your lecture, or a classmate’s discussion comments.
- Relate course content to issues that have local context or personal relevance. The more recent and specific the topic, the more poorly AI will perform.
- Respond to visual or multimedia material as part of their assignment. AI has difficulty processing non-text information.
Find opportunities for students to present, discuss their work, and respond to questions from others. To field questions live requires students to demonstrate their understanding of the topic, and the skill of talking succinctly about one’s work and research is valuable for students in many disciplines. You might ask students to:
- Create an “elevator pitch” for a research idea and submit it as a short video, then watch and respond to peers’ ideas.
- Give an in-class presentation with Q&A that supplements submitted written work.
- Meet with you or your TA to discuss their ideas and receive constructive feedback before or after completing the assignment.
This strategy allows students to show how they have thought about the work that they’ve done and places value on their awareness of their learning. For instance, students might:
- Briefly write about a source or approach they considered but decided not to use and why.
- Discuss a personal connection they made to the learning material.
- Submit a reflection on how the knowledge or skills gained from the assignment apply to their professional practice.
Consider asking students to show the stages of their work or submit assignments in phases, so you can review the development of their ideas or work over time. Explaining the value of the thinking students will do in taking on the work themselves can help deter students’ dependence on AI. Additionally, this strategy helps keep students on track so they do not fall behind and feel pressure to use AI inappropriately. For materials handed in with the final product, it can give you a way to refer back to their process. You may ask students to:
- Submit an outline, list of sources, discussion of a single piece of data, explanation of their approach, or first draft before the final product.
- Meet briefly with an instructor to discuss their approach or work in progress.
- Submit the notes they have taken on sources to prepare their paper, presentation, or project.
Prior to beginning an exam or submitting an assignment, you may ask students to confirm that they have followed the policies regarding academic integrity and AI. This can be particularly helpful for an assignment with different AI guidelines than others in your course. You might:
- Ask students to affirm a statement that all submitted work is their own.
- Ask students to confirm their understanding of your generative AI policy at the start of the assignment.
If you decide to limit student’s use of AI in their work:
- Communicate the policy early, often and in a variety of ways.
- Be Transparent. Clearly explain the reasoning behind your decision to limit or exclude the use of AI in the assignment, focusing on how the assignment relates to the course’s learning objectives and how the use of AI limits the intended learning outcomes.
Design In: Encourage AI Use
You may find that assignments that draw upon generative AI can help your students develop the thinking and skills that are valuable in your field. Careful planning is important to ensure that the designed use of AI furthers your objectives and benefits students. Become familiar with the tasks that AI does and does not do well, and explore how careful prompting can influence its output. These examples represent only a small fraction of potential uses and aim to provide a starting point for considering assignments you might adapt for your courses.
Consider using AI tools to generate original content for students to analyze. You might ask students to:
- Compare multiple versions of an AI-generated approach to problem-solving based on the same task.
- Analyze case studies generated by AI.
- Determine and implement strategies for fact-checking AI-generated assertions to examine the value of information sources.
Generative AI may support students as they take on more advanced thinking by offering help and feedback in real time. For instance, students can:
- Input a provided prompt that guides AI to act as a tutor on an assignment. Prompts can lead the AI tutor to review material, answer questions, and help students use problem-solving strategies to find a solution.
- Ask AI to support the writing process by having it review an essay and provide feedback with explicit instructions to help identify weaknesses in an argument. Consider asking students to turn in the transcript of their discussion with the AI as part of the assignment.
- Use AI for coaching (guidance) through complex tasks like helping students without coding skills create code to analyze materials when the learning goal is data analysis rather than coding.
To support students in learning how to test their ideas, to understand what is arguable, or to practice voicing ideas with feedback, generative AI can be prompted to participate in a conversation. You might ask students to:
- Instruct AI to respond as someone unfamiliar with the course material and engage in a dialogue explaining a concept to the AI.
- Find common ground in a discussion of a controversial issue by asking AI to take a counterposition in the debate. The student could question the AI’s contradictions or identify oversimplifications while focusing on defining their own position.
- Engage with AI as it role-plays a persona like a stakeholder in a case study or a patient in a clinical conversation.
Students can engage with AI as a thought partner at the start or end stages of a project, without allowing AI to do everything. The parts of the task AI does and the parts students should do will depend on the type of learning you want them to accomplish. You might ask students to:
- Use AI to draft an initial hypothesis. Then, the student gathers, synthesizes, and cites evidence that supports or refutes the argument. Finally, the student submits the original AI output along with their finished product.
- Brainstorm with AI, using the tool to generate many possible positions or projects. Students decide which one to pursue and why.
- Develop an initial draft of code on their own, ask AI for assistance to revise or debug, and evaluate the effectiveness of AI in improving the final product.
The specific prompts a user gives to an AI tool strongly determine the quality of its output. Learning to write effective prompts can help students use AI to its fullest potential. Students might:
- Prompt AI to generate responses on a topic the student knows a lot about and evaluate how different prompt characteristics impact the quality and accuracy of AI responses.
- Research applications of prompt engineering that are emerging in their field or discipline.
- Create custom instructions for AI to help with a specific, challenging task. Share their results with peers and evaluate the effectiveness of each others’ results.
If you allow students to utilize AI in their work:
- Make it clear that students are responsible for any inaccuracies in content or citations generated by AI, and that they should own whatever positions they take in submissions.
- Set and communicate clear expectations for when and how AI contributions must be acknowledged or cited.
- Consider barriers that prevent equitable access to high-quality AI tools . S tudents may also have varying levels of AI knowledge and experience us ing the tools. CETLI can assist you in developing an inclusive plan to ensure students can complete the assignment.
If students may use AI with proper attribution, APA , MLA , and Chicago styles each offer recommendations for how to cite AI-generated contributions.
Harvard’s metaLAB AI Pedagogy Project provides additional sample assignments designed to incorporate AI, which are free to use, share, or adapt with appropriate attribution.
CETLI Can Help
CETLI staff are available to discuss ideas or concerns related to generative AI and your teaching, and we can work with your program or department to facilitate conversations about this technology. Contact CETLI to learn more .
- Course Policies & Communication
- Feature Stories: AI in the Classroom
More Resources
- Supporting Your Students
- Inclusive & Equitable Teaching
- Teaching with Technology
- Generative AI & Your Teaching
- Structured Active In-class Learning (SAIL)
- Syllabus Language & Policies
- Academic Integrity
- Course Evaluations
- Teaching Online
- Course Roster, Classroom & Calendar Info
- Policies Concerning Student-Faculty Interactions
- For New Faculty
- Teaching Grants for Faculty
Teaching Commons Autumn Symposium 2024
Get ready for autumn quarter at the Teaching Commons Autumn Symposium. Friday, September 27.
Integrating AI into assignments
Main navigation.
Here we offer strategies and perspectives on integrating AI tools into assignments and activities used to assess student learning.
Creating your course policy on AI
- An effective syllabus works to motivate learning, define goals, explain course structure, and provide support to students as they learn.
- Be clearly stated and specific
- Clarify the context or conditions of allowable AI use
- Explain processes and consequences for non-compliance
- Have a thoughtful pedagogic rationale in support of student learning
- Connect to support resources
- Show support for student well-being
Outcomes for this module
In this module, we will analyze activities and assignments used for assessing learning, provide student-centered perspectives, and offer strategies for developing assessment activities and assignments that integrate student use of generative AI chatbots.
After completing this module, you should be able to:
- Describe why your assessment activities are meaningful to learners.
- Identify and clarify the learning objectives of your assessment activities.
- Identify relevant strategies that can be applied to assessment activities in your course.
- Empathize with student perspectives on using AI in course assessment activities.
Warm-up with a metacognitive exercise
As you begin to explore, think about what you already know and the opinions you may already hold about the educational aspects of AI chatbots. This metacognitive exercise can help you identify what you want to explore and what you already understand. Making connections to what you already know can deepen your learning and support your engagement with these modules.
Begin with the prompt, “Describe an assignment or assessment activity that integrated technology in a way that was effective and engaging for your learning,” and respond to the poll below.
Unpacking your assessment activities and assignments
When designing or adapting an activity or assignment used to assess learning, whether you integrate AI or not, we encourage you to consider two questions: why is this meaningful, and what are students supposed to learn from it?
Define why it is meaningful
Students can learn better when they are motivated and can make meaningful connections to coursework (Headden & McKay, 2015). We might assume that students’ motivations focus on their grades, but that assumption does not provide the full picture, and when applied in isolation it is not likely to sustain deep learning. Articulating what makes an activity meaningful, motivational, and memorable for students can help you create an engaging activity or assignment that enhances student learning and motivation.
Concerning AI chatbots, perhaps the activity or assignment addresses AI in ways that prepare students for future careers, enhance their social connections, or touch upon broader issues they care about. We encourage you to talk with your students about what they find meaningful to inform the design of your activities and assignments. What leads them to want to engage?
Also, reflect on why the assignment is meaningful to you. Is it simply convenient to implement (and standard in your experience as a student and teacher) or does it connect to something deeper in your pedagogy? Perhaps the assignment reinforces the norms and values that you share with other professionals in your discipline, allows you to connect with students in more meaningful ways, builds foundational skills for other parts of the curricula, or explores emergent opportunities and challenges with AI for your field.
Define what students are intended to learn
Next, identify and clarify the underlying learning objectives of the assignment or activity. The objective should describe the observable skills or behaviors students will have learned to perform after completing the activity. Clearly articulated learning objectives can help you develop activities that support learning and assessments that accurately measure student learning.
When thinking about AI chatbots and how they impact writing, you might ask yourself, “What are the underlying learning objectives being addressed through writing?” Instructors may assign writing tasks to assess how students engage with content. In the past, teachers could assume with good reason that a student producing coherent writing must have engaged with the content to generate writing that makes sense. However, we might also question this assumption about the automatic connection between coherent writing and deep engagement. The advent of generative AI has certainly exacerbated this.
Do you ask your students to write to demonstrate and reinforce content knowledge? Do they write to analyze and critique a position? Do they write to formulate arguments and cite evidence? Do they write as a form of creative expression? When you think about the available options, you can likely develop many ways for students to learn and demonstrate these skills with or without writing. Ultimately, honing in on the underlying learning objectives can help you integrate generative AI tools into an assignment.
Students can benefit from understanding how AI works and the educational opportunities and challenges that it presents. Consider offering the content in the modules in this guide to your students as supplemental reading or as part of a class activity.
Strategies for implementing AI into activities and assignments
As you think through how you might address or integrate AI tools in an assessment activity or assignment, we encourage you to consider a range of possibilities related to the specific aims of your course and the needs of your students. Here we offer a variety of pedagogical strategies for you to consider. We present these strategies in the context of students using AI chatbots, but they also apply to contexts without AI. Remember why your assignment is meaningful in relation to your learning objectives to help you select appropriate strategies.
Leverage multiple modalities
Consider ways to diversify when and where you assess student learning and the formats students use to express what they’ve learned.
Use more in-class assignments
Strategies like the flipped classroom model assign lecture content as homework and use the in-class time for learning activities (Lage et al., 2000). You can use this in-class time to integrate more low-stakes assessment activities during which you can better guide students toward using AI in ways that support learning.
Multiple modes of expression
Students may differ in how they can best articulate what they know. Using multiple modalities of expression, such as having students complete assignments that require speaking or graphic representations instead of only written text, stands out as an established strategy within the Universal Design for Learning framework that could apply here. While chatbots primarily generate written text, other AI tools can generate music, graphics, and video. You can thus create assessment activities that integrate multiple modalities at once.
For example, if you are assessing students’ understanding of cultural exchange in the ancient world, students might create a mind map or timeline to visually represent important trends, events, or concepts covered in the assigned readings. AI might then be used to generate images of artifacts, portraits, or cityscapes based on historical descriptions.
Make grading practices clear
Consider ways to clarify for students how they are being graded and what is expected of them.
Require robust citation
Have students learn about and adopt more robust citation practices, especially if they use AI tools for writing. You might begin with conversations about what plagiarism entails and why ethics matter in higher education and your discipline. Then connect students to resources on citation and documentation .
If you and your students decide to use AI tools, you can find style guidelines about citing AI-generated text for APA style and MLA style . These guidelines advise writers to cite the AI tool whenever they paraphrase, quote, or incorporate AI-generated content, acknowledge how they used the tool (for brainstorming, editing, and so on), and vet secondary sources generated by AI. For example, students could include citations for AI in the Works Cited section of their work and also include a statement describing why and how they used AI chatbots.
Establish and communicate clear assessment criteria
Try to bring assessment activities, learning objectives, and evaluation criteria into alignment. For example, if your objectives and assessments center around students proposing a solution to an open-ended problem, then the evaluation criteria might touch upon the feasibility, impact, or comprehensiveness of the proposed solutions. The criteria can vary a lot depending on your content and course, but your students benefit when you communicate these criteria and the purpose and reasoning behind them (Allen & Tanner, 2006).
For example, when integrating AI chatbots into a writing task for students, you might put more weight on the quality of their ideas and the validity of cited sources and less weight on structure, grammar, and word choice. You might then create a rubric that you discuss with students in advance so they have a clear understanding of what will guide you in assessing their work.
Assess learning throughout the course
Consider ways to assess student learning throughout your course as opposed to assessing mostly at the end of the course.
Emphasize the process
You may be able to more effectively assess student learning during the different stages of the process as opposed to assessing learning based on their finished work (Xu, Shen, Islam, et al., 2023). Whether or not students use AI tools, they can benefit from segmenting a large project into smaller components with multiple opportunities for feedback and revision. Also, consider how you might adjust grading criteria or grade weights to put more emphasis on the process.
For some steps in the thinking process, such as brainstorming ideas, formulating a position, and outlining a solution, allowing students to use AI tools might benefit their process. For example, you might have students begin with low-stakes free-writing, such as brainstorming, then use AI chatbots to explore possible areas for further investigation based on the ideas students generate through their exploratory writing. Students might then critique and revise the AI-generated ideas into an outline.
Leverage formative feedback
Teachers provide formative feedback to students throughout the learning process to stimulate growth and improvement. Formative feedback can help students identify misunderstandings, reinforce desirable practices, and sustain motivation (Wylie et al., 2012). You and the teaching team might provide feedback directly to students or you might facilitate students giving feedback to each other. You might then assess how students follow up on feedback they receive.
You can use AI tools to inform your feedback to students or generate feedback directly for students. AI tools could provide instant, individualized feedback efficiently and frequently, supplementing the feedback provided by your teaching team. For example, you might share your existing assignment, rubric, and sample feedback with the chatbot and give it instructions on when and how to give feedback. Importantly, you should review feedback generated by chatbots for accuracy and relevance. Refine and save the prompts that work best. You might later share the prompts you’ve developed with students so they may use them to generate feedback themselves.
Make assignments more meaningful
Consider how you might make your assignments more relatable and meaningful to your students.
Personalize assessments
When done thoughtfully, connecting assessments to the personal experiences, identities, and concerns of students and their communities can help to motivate and deepen learning (France, 2022). You might also connect assignments to contexts specific to Stanford, your course, or your specific group of students.
With AI, you or your students might generate practice questions on topics that came up during a specific class discussion or generate analogies for complex concepts based on their interests and backgrounds. You might ground an assessment activity in local contexts, such as having your engineering students propose a plan to improve Lake Lagunita.
Use real-world assessment tasks
Assignments that leverage real-world problems, stakeholders, and communities that students are likely to engage with in their work lives can be motivational and valid ways of evaluating a student’s skills and knowledge (Sambell et al., 2019).
For example, students might work with real (or AI-simulated) business or community partners to develop a prototype product or policy brief. Students might have more time to work with those stakeholders and refine their proposal concepts if they can use AI tools to assist with time-consuming tasks, such as summarizing interview transcripts, writing a project pitch statement, or generating concept images.
AI itself might provide a relevant topic of study for your course. For example, you might examine AI as part of a discussion in a course about copyright and intellectual property law. Or you might analyze AI companies such OpenAI or Anthropic as case studies in a business course.
Assess more advanced learning
Consider ways you might assess more advanced or wider-ranging learning goals and objectives.
Emphasize metacognitive reflection
Metacognitive reflection activities, where students think about what and how they learn, can help students improve their learning (Velzen, 2017). You might use polls, discussion activities, or short writing exercises through which students identify what they already know about the topic, what they learned, what questions remain, and what learning strategies they might use for studying.
AI chatbots can help guide the reflection process like this reflection tool being developed by Leticia Britos Cavagnaro at Stanford d.school . Or perhaps students complete some activities with AI, then reflect on how it benefits or hinders their learning, and what strategies they might use to best leverage AI for learning.
Prioritize higher-order thinking
While students should develop mastery over foundational skills such as understanding concepts, identifying key characteristics, and recalling important information, practicing higher-order thinking skills, such as solving complex problems, creating original works, or planning a project, can deepen learning. For example, you might frame student essays as a defense of their views rather than a simple presentation of content knowledge. You might adjust assessment criteria to prioritize creativity or applying skills to new contexts.
Prioritizing higher-order thinking can encourage students to use AI tools to go beyond simply generating answers to engaging deeply with AI chatbots to generate sophisticated responses. Students could conduct preliminary research to find reliable sources that verify or refute the claims made by the AI chatbots. AI chatbots might then generate feedback, provide prompts for further reflection, or simulate new contexts.
Putting it all together
Here we offer a practical example: first, a typical assignment as usually designed, and then how you could enhance the assignment with some strategies that integrate AI chatbots.
When thinking about your course, start with small changes to one assignment and steadily expand upon them. Try to use AI chatbots for your other work tasks to build your fluency. Talk with students and colleagues about how the changes to your course work out concerning student engagement and learning. When integrating AI into an existing assignment, begin with an assignment that already has clearly defined learning objectives and rationale. Begin by using AI or other technology to supplement existing parts of the process of completing the assignment.
More examples of AI assignments
- AI Pedagogy Project from metaLAB (at) Harvard
- Exploring AI Pedagogy from the MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI
- TextGenEd: Continuing Experiments, January 2024 Collection from WAC Clearinghouse
Example of an assignment without AI
Currently, your students in an epidemiology course write essays summarizing the key concepts of an academic article about the socio-determinants of diabetes . This assessment activity has meaning because it focuses on a foundational concept students need to understand for later public health and epidemiology courses. The learning objective asks students to describe why socio-economic status is a strong predictor for certain diseases. Students write a five-page essay about a disease that can be predicted by socio-economic status including at least three additional citations. Students complete the essay, which counts for 30% of the final grade, before the final exam.
An example of an assignment that integrates AI
Using some of the strategies in the above sections, you might redesign this assignment to integrate the use of AI chatbots. Keep in mind that you would likely make small changes to a major assignment over multiple quarters. Consider some of the ideas below.
A meaningful assignment
The redesigned assessment activity carries more meaning to students because they might have personal experience of some communities adversely affected by these kinds of diseases, and public health issues like this intersect with other social injustices that students have expressed concern about.
Learning objectives
The objectives of the assessment activity include that students will be able to:
- Describe how this disease affects particular communities or demographics
- Explain the difference between correlation and causality regarding socioeconomic status and the disease
- Propose a public health intervention that could help to address this issue
Assignment elements with AI
Students generate explanations of medical terminology in the selected articles to aid with reading comprehension. They generate several analogies for the core concept that apply to their own life experiences and communities. Students share these analogies in a Canvas forum graded for participation. Instructors provide general feedback in class.
Informed by the article, students then prompt a chatbot with biographical stories for two fictional characters from communities they care about incorporating differing socio-economic factors. Then they guide the chatbot in generating a dialogue or short story that illustrates how the two characters could have different health outcomes that might correlate with their socio-economic status. Students might use AI image generators for illustrations to accompany their stories. Students submit the work via Canvas for evaluation; the teacher shares exemplars in class.
Using an AI chatbot prompt provided by the instructor, students explore possible ideas for public health interventions. The provided prompt instructs the chatbot only to help students develop their ideas rather than suggesting solutions to them. With the aid of the chatbot, the students develop a public health intervention proposal.
Assignment elements without AI
Students discuss the differences between correlation and causation, critically analyze the generated characters and stories, and address any biases and stereotypes that surfaced during the activity. You facilitate the discussion with prompts and guidelines you developed with the aid of AI chatbots. Students write an in-class metacognitive reflection that you provide feedback on and grade for completion.
Students draw posters that summarize their proposed intervention. They critique and defend their proposals in a classroom poster session. Students complete a peer evaluation form for classmates. You evaluate the posters and their defenses with a grading rubric that you developed with the aid of an AI chatbot.
Students write an in-class reflection on their projects summarizing what they have learned over the length of the project, how the activities aided their learning, and so on. This is submitted to Canvas for grading and evaluation.
Student-centered perspective on using AI for learning
When thinking about integrating generative AI into a course assignment for students, we should consider some underlying attitudes that we, the authors, hold as educators, informed by our understanding of educational research on how people learn best. They also align with our values of inclusion, compassion, and student-centered teaching. When thinking through ways to integrate AI into a student assignment, keep the following perspectives in mind.
AI is new to students too
Like many of us, students likely have a wide range of responses to AI. Students may feel excited about how AI can enhance their learning and look for opportunities to engage with it in their classes. They may have questions about course policies related to AI use, concerns about how AI impacts their discipline or career goals, and so on. You can play a valuable role in modeling thoughtful use of AI tools and helping students navigate the complex landscape of AI.
Work with students, not against them
You and your students can work together to navigate these opportunities and challenges. Solicit their perspectives and thoughts about AI. Empower students to have agency over their learning and to think about AI and other technologies they use. Teaching and learning are interconnected and work best in partnership. Approach changes to your teaching and course to empower all students as literate, responsible, independent, and thoughtful technology users.
Look at AI and students in a positive light
Education as a discipline has repeatedly integrated new technologies that may have seemed disruptive at first. Educators and students typically grapple with new technology as they determine how to best leverage its advantages and mitigate its disadvantages. We encourage you to maintain a positive view of student intentions and the potential of AI tools to enhance learning. As we collectively discover and develop effective practices, we encourage you to maintain a positive and hopeful outlook. We should try to avoid assuming that most students would use generative AI in dishonest ways or as a shortcut to doing course assignments just because some students might behave this way.
Assess and reinforce your learning
We offer this activity for you to self-assess and reflect on what you learned in this module.
Stanford affiliates
- Go to the Stanford-only version of this activity
- Use your Stanford-provided Google account to respond.
- You have the option of receiving an email summary of your responses.
- After submitting your responses, you will have the option to view the anonymized responses of other Stanford community members by clicking Show previous responses .
Non-Stanford users
- Complete the activity embedded below.
- Your responses will only be seen by the creators of these modules.
- Course and Assignment (Re-)Design , University of Michigan, Information and Technology Services
- ChatGPT Assignments to Use in Your Classroom Today , University of Central Florida
Works Cited
Allen, D., and Tanner, K. (2006). Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners. CBE - Life Sciences Education. 5(3): 197-203.
Ashford-Rowe, K., Herrington, J., & Brown, C. (2014). Establishing the critical elements that determine authentic assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2013.819566  ;
Bijlsma-Rutte, A., Rutters, F., Elders, P. J. M., Bot, S. D. M., & Nijpels, G. (2018). Socio-economic status and HbA1c in type 2 diabetes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews, 34(6), e3008. https://doi.org/10.1002/dmrr.3008  ;
CAST. (n.d.). UDL: The UDL Guidelines. Retrieved January 22, 2024, from https://udlguidelines.cast.org/  ;
Exploring AI Pedagogy. (n.d.). A Community Collection of Teaching Reflections. Retrieved January 22, 2024, from https://exploringaipedagogy.hcommons.org/  ;
France, P. E. (2022). Reclaiming Personalized Learning: A Pedagogy for Restoring Equity and Humanity in Our Classrooms (2nd ed.). Corwin.
Headden, S., & McKay, S. (2015). Motivation Matters: How New Research Can Help Teachers Boost Student Engagement. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED582567  ;
Hume Center for Writing and Speaking. (n.d.). Documentation and Citation. Retrieved January 22, 2024, from https://hume.stanford.edu/resources/student-resources/writing-resources… ;
Lage, M. J., Platt, G. J., & Treglia, M. T. (2000). Inverting the Classroom: A gateway to creating an inclusive learning environment. Journal of Economic Education, 31(1), 30-43.
metaLAB (at) Harvard. (n.d.). The AI Pedagogy Project. Retrieved January 22, 2024, from https://aipedagogy.org/  ;
MLA Style Center. (2023, March 17). How do I cite generative AI in MLA style? https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai/  ;
Office of Community Standards. (n.d.). What Is Plagiarism? Retrieved January 22, 2024, from https://communitystandards.stanford.edu/policies-guidance/bja-guidance-… ;
Sambell, K., Brown, S., & Race, P. (2019). Assessment to Support Student Learning: Eight Challenges for 21st Century Practice. All Ireland Journal of Higher Education, 11(2), Article 2. https://ojs.aishe.org/index.php/aishe-j/article/view/414  ;
The WAC Clearinghouse. (n.d.). January 2024. Retrieved January 22, 2024, from https://wac.colostate.edu/repository/collections/continuing-experiments… ;
U-M Generative AI. (n.d.). Course and Assignment (Re-)Design. Retrieved January 22, 2024, from https://genai.umich.edu/guidance/faculty/redesigning-assessments  ;
Van Velzen, J. (2017). Metacognitive Knowledge: Development, Application, and Improvement. Information Age Publishing. https://content.infoagepub.com/files/fm/p599a21e816eb6/9781641130240_FM… . ISBN 9781641130226.
Wylie, E. C., Gullickson, A. R., Cummings, K. E., Egelson, P., Noakes, L. A., Norman, K. M., Veeder, S. A., ... Popham, W. J. (2012). Improving Formative Assessment Practice to Empower Student Learning. Corwin Press.
Xu, X., Shen, W., Islam, A. A., et al. (2023). A whole learning process-oriented formative assessment framework to cultivate complex skills. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10, 653. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02200-0
Yee, K., Whittington, K., Doggette, E., & Uttich, L. (2023). ChatGPT Assignments to Use in Your Classroom Today. UCF Created OER Works, (8). Retrieved from https://stars.library.ucf.edu/oer/8
You've completed all the modules
We hope that you found these modules useful and engaging, and are better able to address AI chatbots in your teaching practice. Please continue to engage by joining or starting dialogues about AI within your communities. You might also take advantage of our peers across campus who are developing resources on this topic.
- Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
- Accelerator for Learning
- Office of Innovation and Technology , Graduate School of Education
We are continuing to develop more resources and learning experiences for the Teaching Commons on this and other topics. We'd love to get your feedback and are looking for collaborators. We invite you to join the Teaching Commons team .
Learning together with others can deepen the learning experience. We encourage you to organize your colleagues to complete these modules together or facilitate a workshop using our Do-it-yourself Workshop Kits on AI in education. Consider how you might adapt, remix, or enhance these resources for your needs.
If you have any questions, contact us at [email protected] . This guide is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 (attribution, non-commercial, share-alike) and should be attributed to Stanford Teaching Commons.
Artificial Intelligence and Assignment Design
Generative ai assignments.
There are both academic and practical reasons you may choose to incorporate generative AI assignments into your course. For example, you may believe that AI will be a skill needed in the students’ future careers in your field. Perhaps you see AI as a tool to help students deepen their understanding of and engagement with your content. You may see the introduction of AI into your classroom as a way to open a conversation about its ethical and academic implications. Integrating AI ironically allows instructors to think deeply about how to design assignments that cannot be easily generated by AI alone to deter plagiarism and cheating. This guide comes from the perspective that you are open to developing AI assignments.
Note, it is critical to develop AI policies for your course along with policies for specific AI assignments.
Considerations for Developing an AI Assignment
Alignment with your course goals.
In the development of AI assignments, the primary consideration is whether the use of AI will help your students achieve the learning goals of the course. Ask yourself, does this assignment help student gain skills and knowledge central to your course and field? Furthermore, consider whether the assignment is engaging enough to warrant incorporating AI. Are you asking students to go above and beyond the AI-generated content? An impactful assignment will challenge students to transform, expand upon, correct, or critique the information and content generated by AI or learning about themselves in relationship to AI. Educational pedagogy expert Derek Bruff gives further insight into how to think about AI assignments as they relate to course design in his blog post about AI and writing assignments .
Guidelines for Use
If you integrate AI into your assignments, be sure to discuss your expectations with your students. It is essential that they understand why you have decided to allow AI in the course and its role in their learning. Furthermore, students can be engaged in wider conversations about AI and its personal impact on their lives. The University of Calgary has developed a set of recommendations of how to start these conversations. One strategy is writing a code of conduct that emphasizes critical thinking and sets guardrails of proper use. You can provide a prewritten list of guidelines or work with the students from scratch by posing questions about AI and learning.
For example, the class may have guidelines such as:
- We will only use AI to help our intellectual development, not replace it.
- We will be transparent in our use of AI.
- We will not submit AI generated text without attribution.
- We will follow guidelines of when AI is appropriate to use.
Assignment Mechanics
Detailed instructions for an AI assignment will raise the chances for a successful learning experience. Students are not familiar with the processes of this novel type of intellectual work, and thinking through the different facets of the activity will help you to execute and evaluate the assignment confidently. Consider the following questions:
- Are you allowing ample time to complete the assignment considering it is a new tool for students?
- Is it better to do the assignment together in class or out of class?
- Have you practiced using the technology together?
- How should AI be cited? Are there specific steps for showing how the original AI text is changed?
- What kind of prompts are allowed? What functions can AI be used for?
- How will you provide feedback on their use of AI?
AI Literacy
Both you and your students should have a level playing field when it comes to understanding generative AI. You cannot count on students to understand the pitfalls and limitations of AI or even how to use the tools. There are existing resources on AI literacy developed specifically for students that can be a starting point. This library guide from the University of Arizona instructs students on AI, plus there is a companion guide for instructors as well.
Ethical Concerns
There are ethical issues to using AI beyond questions of plagiarism, copyright and academic integrity that should be considered. First, to minimize threats to the privacy of your students and yourself, personal information should not be shared. To dive deeper into privacy concerns, speak with students about the implications of AI services using our data to train their tools.
Second, students may not have equal access to the internet or sufficient funds for subscriptions to AI tools. Be sure to suggest several different AI tools and confirm that students are able to access at least one tool without paying for it. Not all students may take to generative AI equally and will not have the skills to architect effective prompts for your discipline or type of assignment. You can support them by modeling prompt generation or forming groups in class that can work together with AI.
Finally, for instructors who do allow AI for learning, there should be considerations for students who do not want to use it on ethical grounds. This could be solved by making AI assignments low-stakes or optional.
Types of Generative AI Assignments
Below are some general ideas of how to incorporate AI into your course. We encourage you to seek out examples from your discipline or related to the core skills of your course. Some resources worth exploring are ChatGPT asssignments to use in your classroom today (an open source book from the University of Central Florida) and a publication on coding and generative AI by an international group of computer science instructors. Instructors may also wish to leverage generative AI to help with routine tasks and lesson planning .
Brainstorming Ideas and Defining Concepts
Generative AI excels at summarizing content and explaining concepts. Warning to students, it is not necessarily 100% correct!
- Users can ask AI to brainstorm research questions. “What are some examples of bank failures due to fractional reserve banking ?” Or, “What are some of the major events of the Cold War?”
- Users can ask AI for clarification of concepts or terms they don’t understand. “Explain fractional reserve banking in simple terms. ” Or, “What are the Federalist papers and why are they important?”
- Instructors can ask for resources or ideas of how to teach students content. “Provide an explanation of fractional reserve banking that discusses the pros and cons of its use .” Or, “What are some exercises to do in the classroom to teach the lifecycle of a butterfly?”
Writing Assistance
While it is possible to use generative AI to correct an entire essay, students can be instructed to prompt AI to provide limited feedback on specific aspects of their writing. Prompts could be limited in scope. For example, students can ask AI to:
- Rate the clarity of an argument “How well did I explain X? ” Or, “Does this writing contain all of the standard sections of a case study ?”
- Suggest alternatives “Rewrite the conclusion to better summarize the content.” Or, “What is another way to explain this idea?”
- Comment on writing mechanics “Review the sentence structure in this essay.” Or, “Check this essay for passive voice.”
- Provide advice for improvement “List the common grammar mistakes in the essay and provide an explanation of the errors.” Or, “How can I make this writing more upbeat?”
Collaborative Writing
One popular assignment helps instructors show why writing for yourself is important intellectual work. Students read an AI-generated essay and grade it with a rubric. As a class the students discuss its strengths and weaknesses. As a follow-up students can submit a revised essay. In one Yale course, the instructor told students to ask ChatGPT to write its own version of a writing prompt after the students had completed an assignment so they could compare their writing against it.
Another approach to collaboration is to ask AI to write a first draft of an assignment. Students then improve it by doing independent research to double-check the AI content and refining (or rejecting) the AI arguments. Students should record both the questions they asked and the generated text. Students can also be asked to write summaries describing what they learned from the AI search and what they changed. The SPACE framework is a powerful model for organizing these types of writing assignments; the article details the cycle of prompting AI, evaluating its output, and rewriting AI generated content.
Arguably, the greatest strength of generative AI tools may be their ability to write code. Computer scientists are especially concerned about assignments in entry-level programming classes. The way coding is taught may change over time due to AI, but there are short-term strategies that incorporate AI but demand student input.
- AI could be asked to generate small snippets of code that students integrate into a larger programming project. Students test, debug and refine the code.
- After completing a coding assignment, students prompt AI to write a different implementation of the problem and analyze which is more efficient and why.
- Instructors or students write faulty code and use ChatGPT to generate test cases and/or to fix the errors.
- Instructors take advantage of AI to generate more coding assignments and review questions for exams.
Two researchers from UC San Diego published the findings of a study about the attitudes of computer scientists to generative AI and possible directions for teaching coding in the future.
ChatGPT and other generative AI tools do not produce expository content only. They are also able to generate content in many creative genres, often with laughable results ( “Write a pop song in the style of Shakespeare” ) The breadth of the kinds of writing generative AI can mimic might provide the chance for humans to use generative AI to spark creativity in themselves. Student might ask AI to describe the life in the Middle Ages from the perspective of a midwife as inspiration to write a modern version, or as background information for writing in another genre. Generative AI can help instructors deliver content in new ways, for example introducing games into teaching. Instructors might ask AI to develop trivia questions for exam review or a game of 20 questions as an in-class activity.
Generative AI can be a coach for learning that supports both instructors and students. Students can easily get more information about what they don’t understand. AI can be an agent for adaptive learning allowing students to “pass” certain learning objectives and get additional practice on concepts and skills they haven’t mastered. By the same token, it can assist instructors who need to provide additional assistance to students and are pressed for time to find resources. Instructors can get ideas for teaching a skill or subject with activity descriptions and lesson plans. AI can generate practice problems or review questions for exam prep, which frees up time for instructors for other class prep.
There are also positive gains in equity when generative AI is used in a tutoring setting. A neurodiverse student may find conversations with a bot to be non-judgmental and less stressful when needing help. Non-native speakers can ask for word and concept definitions to level up their understanding of course content and context. The review and tutoring capabilities of AI can help all students to practice concepts and receive feedback on their progress.
Looking Ahead
Incorporating generative AI into education is not without peril. Students’ reliance on AI content could potentially lead to losing skills in academic writing. There is the risk that students might mistakenly believe that AI is inherently better at developing ideas and expressing information; leaving students uncomfortable adding their own voice to writing. Without training on how to check the validity of AI content and conduct independent research, students may miss out on how to evaluate sources and compare ideas.
Like it or not, at this moment it lands on educators to design courses and assignments to mitigate these risks and to have hard and timely conversations with students. It may feel like AI is encroaching on teaching and learning, but we should remember that there are many aspects of teaching that are as important as delivering content. These are skills that only human instructors can perform, such as
- Providing real-time feedback on complex tasks
- Grading or producing subjective or substantive work
- Providing social or emotional support
- Teaching complex, interconnected concepts
- Engaging in personal interactions
The future of teaching may increasingly focus on those skills that our students need to make sense of their world, engage with others productively and make connections across disciplines and concepts.
General Resources for AI Assignments
A Teacher’s Guide to Prompt ChatGPT , Andrew Herft
AI in the Classroom , UC Riverside
- Reviews / Why join our community?
- For companies
- Frequently asked questions
Design Thinking (DT)
What is design thinking (dt).
Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. It is most useful to tackle ill-defined or unknown problems and involves five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.
- Transcript loading…
Why Is Design Thinking so Important?
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” — Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO
Design thinking fosters innovation . Companies must innovate to survive and remain competitive in a rapidly changing environment. In design thinking, cross-functional teams work together to understand user needs and create solutions that address those needs. Moreover, the design thinking process helps unearth creative solutions.
Design teams use design thinking to tackle ill-defined/unknown problems (aka wicked problems ). Alan Dix, Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, explains what wicked problems are in this video.
Wicked problems demand teams to think outside the box, take action immediately, and constantly iterate—all hallmarks of design thinking.
Don Norman, a pioneer of user experience design, explains why the designer’s way of thinking is so powerful when it comes to such complex problems.
Design thinking offers practical methods and tools that major companies like Google, Apple and Airbnb use to drive innovation. From architecture and engineering to technology and services, companies across industries have embraced the methodology to drive innovation and address complex problems.
The End Goal of Design Thinking: Be Desirable, Feasible and Viable
The design thinking process aims to satisfy three criteria: desirability (what do people desire?), feasibility (is it technically possible to build the solution?) and viability (can the company profit from the solution?). Teams begin with desirability and then bring in the other two lenses.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
Desirability: Meet People’s Needs
The design thinking process starts by looking at the needs, dreams and behaviors of people—the end users. The team listens with empathy to understand what people want, not what the organization thinks they want or need. The team then thinks about solutions to satisfy these needs from the end user’s point of view.
Feasibility: Be Technologically Possible
Once the team identifies one or more solutions, they determine whether the organization can implement them. In theory, any solution is feasible if the organization has infinite resources and time to develop the solution. However, given the team’s current (or future resources), the team evaluates if the solution is worth pursuing. The team may iterate on the solution to make it more feasible or plan to increase its resources (say, hire more people or acquire specialized machinery).
At the beginning of the design thinking process, teams should not get too caught up in the technical implementation. If teams begin with technical constraints, they might restrict innovation.
Viability: Generate Profits
A desirable and technically feasible product isn’t enough. The organization must be able to generate revenues and profits from the solution. The viability lens is essential not only for commercial organizations but also for non-profits.
Traditionally, companies begin with feasibility or viability and then try to find a problem to fit the solution and push it to the market. Design thinking reverses this process and advocates that teams begin with desirability and bring in the other two lenses later.
The Five Stages of Design Thinking
Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, commonly known as the d.school, is renowned for its pioneering approach to design thinking. Their design process has five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. These stages are not always sequential. Teams often run them in parallel, out of order, and repeat them as needed.
Stage 1: Empathize —Research Users' Needs
The team aims to understand the problem, typically through user research. Empathy is crucial to design thinking because it allows designers to set aside your assumptions about the world and gain insight into users and their needs.
Stage 2: Define—State Users' Needs and Problems
Once the team accumulates the information, they analyze the observations and synthesize them to define the core problems. These definitions are called problem statements . The team may create personas to help keep efforts human-centered.
Stage 3: Ideate—Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas
With the foundation ready, teams gear up to “think outside the box.” They brainstorm alternative ways to view the problem and identify innovative solutions to the problem statement.
Stage 4: Prototype—Start to Create Solutions
This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best possible solution for each problem. The team produces inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product (or specific features found within the product) to investigate the ideas. This may be as simple as paper prototypes .
Stage 5: Test—Try the Solutions Out
The team tests these prototypes with real users to evaluate if they solve the problem. The test might throw up new insights, based on which the team might refine the prototype or even go back to the Define stage to revisit the problem.
These stages are different modes that contribute to the entire design project rather than sequential steps. The goal is to gain a deep understanding of the users and their ideal solution/product.
Design Thinking Frameworks
There is no single definition or process for design thinking. The five-stage design thinking methodology described above is just one of several frameworks.
Hasso-Platner Institute Panorama
Ludwig Wilhelm Wall, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Innovation doesn’t follow a linear path or have a clear-cut formula. Global design leaders and consultants have interpreted the abstract design process in different ways and have proposed other frameworks of design thinking.
Head, Heart and Hand by the American Institution of Graphic Arts (AIGA)
The Head, Heart, and Hand approach by AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) is a holistic perspective on design. It integrates the intellectual, emotional, and practical aspects of the creative process.
More than a process, the Head, Heart and Hand framework outlines the different roles that designers must perform to create great results.
© American Institute of Graphic Arts, Fair Use
“ Head ” symbolizes the intellectual component. The team focuses on strategic thinking, problem-solving and the cognitive aspects of design. It involves research and analytical thinking to ensure that design decisions are purposeful.
“ Heart ” represents the emotional dimension. It emphasizes empathy, passion, and human-centeredness. This aspect is crucial in understanding the users’ needs, desires, and experiences to ensure that designs resonate on a deeper, more personal level.
“ Hand ” signifies the practical execution of ideas, the craftsmanship, and the skills necessary to turn concepts into tangible solutions. This includes the mastery of tools, techniques, and materials, as well as the ability to implement and execute design ideas effectively.
Inspire, Ideate, Implement by IDEO
IDEO is a leading design consultancy and has developed its own version of the design thinking framework.
IDEO’s design thinking process is a cyclical three-step process that involves Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation.
© IDEO, Public License
In the “ Inspire ” phase, the team focuses on understanding users’ needs, behaviors, and motivations. The team empathizes with people through observation and user interviews to gather deep insights.
In the “ Ideate ” phase, the team synthesizes the insights gained to brainstorm a wide array of creative solutions. This stage encourages divergent thinking, where teams focus on quantity and variety of ideas over immediate practicality. The goal is to explore as many possibilities as possible without constraints.
In the “ Implement ” phase, the team brings these ideas to life through prototypes. The team tests, iterates and refines these ideas based on user feedback. This stage is crucial for translating abstract concepts into tangible, viable products, services, or experiences.
The methodology emphasizes collaboration and a multidisciplinary approach throughout each phase to ensure solutions are innovative and deeply rooted in real human needs and contexts.
The Double Diamond by the Design Council
In the book Designing Social Systems in a Changing World , Béla Heinrich Bánáthy, Professor at San Jose State University and UC Berkeley, created a “divergence-convergence model” diagram. The British Design Council interpreted this diagram to create the Double Diamond design process model.
As the name suggests, the double diamond model consists of two diamonds—one for the problem space and the other for the solution space. The model uses diamonds to represent the alternating diverging and converging activities.
© Design Council, CC BY 4.0
In the diverging “ Discover ” phase, designers gather insights and empathize with users’ needs. The team then converges in the “ Define ” phase to identify the problem.
The second, solution-related diamond, begins with “ Develop ,” where the team brainstorms ideas. The final stage is “ Deliver ,” where the team tests the concepts and implements the most viable solution.
This model balances expansive thinking with focused execution to ensure that design solutions are both creative and practical. It underscores the importance of understanding the problem thoroughly and carefully crafting the solution, making it a staple in many design and innovation processes.
With the widespread adoption of the double diamond framework, Design Council’s simple visual evolved.
In this expanded and annotated version, the framework emphasizes four design principles:
Be people-centered.
Communicate (visually and inclusively).
Collaborate and co-create.
Iterate, iterate, iterate!
The updated version also highlights the importance of leadership (to create an environment that allows innovation) and engagement (to connect with different stakeholders and involve them in the design process).
Common Elements of Design Thinking Frameworks
On the surface, design thinking frameworks look very different—they use alternative names and have different numbers of steps. However, at a fundamental level, they share several common traits.
Start with empathy . Focus on the people to come up with solutions that work best for individuals, business, and society.
Reframe the problem or challenge at hand . Don’t rush into a solution. Explore the problem space and look at the issue through multiple perspectives to gain a more holistic, nuanced understanding.
Initially, employ a divergent style of thinking (analyze) . In the problem space, gather as many insights as possible. In the solution space, encourage team members to generate and explore as many solutions as possible in an open, judgment-free ideation space.
Later, employ a convergent style of thinking (synthesize) . In the problem space, synthesize all data points to define the problem. In the solution space, whittle down all the ideas—isolate, combine and refine potential solutions to create more mature ideas.
Create and test prototypes . Solutions that make it through the previous stages get tested further to remove potential issues.
Iterate . As the team progresses through the various stages, they revisit different stages and may redefine the challenge based on new insights.
Design thinking is a non-linear process. For example, teams may jump from the test stage to the define stage if the tests reveal insights that redefine the problem. Or, a prototype might spark a new idea, prompting the team to step back into the ideate stage. Tests may also create new ideas for projects or reveal insights about users.
Design Thinking Mindsets: More than a Process
A mindset is a characteristic mental attitude that determines how one interprets and responds to situations . Design thinking mindsets are how individuals think , feel and express themselves during design thinking activities. It includes people’s expectations and orientations during a design project.
Without the right mindset, it can be very challenging to change how we work and think.
The key mindsets that ensure a team can successfully implement design thinking are.
Be empathetic: Empathy is the ability to place yourself, your thinking and feelings in another person’s shoes. Design thinking begins from a deep understanding of the needs and motivations of people—the parents, neighbors, children, colleagues, and strangers who make up a community.
Be collaborative: No one person is responsible for the outcome when you work in a team. Several great minds are always stronger than just one. Design thinking benefits from the views of multiple perspectives and lets others’ creativity bolster your own.
Be optimistic: Be confident about achieving favorable outcomes. Design thinking is the fundamental belief that we can all create change—no matter how big a problem, how little time, or how small a budget. Designing can be a powerful process no matter what constraints exist around you.
Embrace ambiguity: Get comfortable with ambiguous and complex situations. If you expect perfection, it is difficult to take risks, which limits your ability to create radical change. Design thinking is all about experimenting and learning by doing. It gives you the confidence to believe that new, better things are possible and that you can help make them a reality.
Be curious: Be open to different ideas. Recognize that you are not the user.
Reframe: Challenge and reframe assumptions associated with a given situation or problem. Don’t take problems at face value. Humans are primed to look for patterns. The unfortunate side effect of these patterns is that we form (often false and sometimes dangerous) stereotypes and assumptions. Design thinking aims to help you break through any preconceived notions and biases and reframe challenges.
Embrace diversity: Work with and engage people with different cultural backgrounds, experiences, and ways of thinking and working. Everyone brings a unique perspective to the team. When you include diverse voices in a team, you learn from each other’s experiences, further helping you break through your assumptions.
Make tangible: When you make ideas tangible, it is faster and easier for everyone on the team to be on the same page. For example, sketching an idea or enacting a scenario is far more convenient and easy to interpret than an elaborate presentation or document.
Take action: Run experiments and learn from them.
Design Thinking vs Agile Methodology
Teams often use design thinking and agile methodologies in project management, product development, and software development. These methodologies have distinct approaches but share some common principles.
Similarities between Design Thinking and Agile
Iterative process.
Both methodologies emphasize iterative development. In design thinking, teams may jump from one phase to another, not necessarily in a set cyclical or linear order. For example, on testing a prototype, teams may discover something new about their users and realize that they must redefine the problem. Agile teams iterate through development sprints.
User-Centered
The agile and design thinking methodologies focus on the end user. All design thinking activities—from empathizing to prototyping and testing—keep the end users front and center. Agile teams continually integrate user feedback into development cycles.
Collaboration and Teamwork
Both methodologies rely heavily on collaboration among cross-functional teams and encourage diverse perspectives and expertise.
Flexibility and Adaptability
With its focus on user research, prototyping and testing, design thinking ensures teams remain in touch with users and get continuous feedback. Similarly, agile teams monitor user feedback and refine the product in a reasonably quick time.
In this video, Laura Klein, author of Build Better Products , describes a typical challenge designers face on agile teams. She encourages designers to get comfortable with the idea of a design not being perfect. Notice the many parallels between Laura’s advice for designers on agile teams and the mindsets of design thinking.
Differences between Design Thinking and Agile
While design thinking and agile teams share principles like iteration, user focus, and collaboration, they are neither interchangeable nor mutually exclusive. A team can apply both methodologies without any conflict.
From a user experience design perspective, design thinking applies to the more abstract elements of strategy and scope. At the same time, agile is more relevant to the more concrete elements of UX: structure, skeleton and surface. For quick reference, here’s an overview of the five elements of user experience.
Design thinking is more about exploring and defining the right problem and solution, whereas agile is about efficiently executing and delivering a product.
Here are the key differences between design thinking and agile.
|
|
|
| It primarily originates in design and borrows from multiple disciplines, including psychology, systems thinking, and business strategy. | It primarily originates from software development and borrows from disciplines such as manufacturing and project management. |
| Problem-solving and innovative solutions. | Efficient product delivery. |
| Usually, toward the beginning of a project. Aims to define the problem and test and pick a solution. | Usually, after teams have a clear solution. Aims to deliver that solution and continuously iterate on the live product. |
| Fluid process, less formal and relatively lesser documentation. | Structured and formal process with extensive documentation. |
| An idea or solution, usually with a prototype, may not be tangible. | Tangible, working product (usually software) shipped to end users. |
Design Sprint: A Condensed Version of Design Thinking
A design sprint is a 5-day intensive workshop where cross-functional teams aim to develop innovative solutions.
The design sprint is a very structured version of design thinking that fits into the timeline of a sprint (a sprint is a short timeframe in which agile teams work to produce deliverables). Developed by Google Ventures, the design sprint seeks to fast-track innovation.
In this video, user researcher Ditte Hvas Mortensen explains the design sprint in detail.
Learn More about Design Thinking
Design consultancy IDEO’s designkit is an excellent repository of design thinking tools and case studies.
To keep up with recent developments in design thinking, read IDEO CEO Tim Brown’s blog .
Enroll in our course Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide —an excellent guide to get you started on your design thinking projects.
Questions related to Design Thinking
You don’t need any certification to practice design thinking. However, learning about the nuances of the methodology can help you:
Pick the appropriate methods and tailor the process to suit the unique needs of your project.
Avoid common pitfalls when you apply the methods.
Better lead a team and facilitate workshops.
Increase the chances of coming up with innovative solutions.
IxDF has a comprehensive course to help you gain the most from the methodology: Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .
Anyone can apply design thinking to solve problems. Despite what the name suggests, non-designers can use the methodology in non-design-related scenarios. The methodology helps you think about problems from the end user’s perspective. Some areas where you can apply this process:
Develop new products with greater chances of success.
Address community-related issues (such as education, healthcare and environment) to improve society and living standards.
Innovate/enhance existing products to gain an advantage over the competition.
Achieve greater efficiencies in operations and reduce costs.
Use the Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide course to apply design thinking to your context today.
A framework is the basic structure underlying a system, concept, or text. There are several design thinking frameworks with slight differences. However, all the frameworks share some traits. Each framework:
Begins with empathy.
Reframes the problem or challenge at hand.
Initially employs divergent styles of thinking to generate ideas.
Later, it employs convergent styles of thinking to narrow down the best ideas,
Creates and tests prototypes.
Iterates based on the tests.
Some of the design thinking frameworks are:
5-stage design process by d.school
7-step early traditional design process by Herbert Simon
The 5-Stage DeepDive™ by IDEO
The “Double Diamond” Design Process Model by the Design Council
Collective Action Toolkit (CAT) by Frog Design
The LUMA System of Innovation by LUMA Institute
For details about each of these frameworks, see 10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview .
IDEO’s 3-Stage Design Thinking Process consists of inspiration, ideation and implementation:
Inspire : The problem or opportunity inspires and motivates the search for a solution.
Ideate : A process of synthesis distills insights which can lead to solutions or opportunities for change.
Implement : The best ideas are turned into a concrete, fully conceived action plan.
IDEO is a leader in applying design thinking and has developed many frameworks. Find out more in 10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview .
Design Council's Double Diamond diagram depicts the divergent and convergent stages of the design process.
Béla H. Bánáthy, founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program, created the “divergence-convergence” model in 1996. In the mid-2000s, the British Design Council made this famous as the Double Diamond model.
The Double Diamond diagram graphically represents a design thinking process. It highlights the divergent and convergent styles of thinking in the design process. It has four distinct phases:
Discover: Initial idea or inspiration based on user needs.
Define: Interpret user needs and align them with business objectives.
Develop: Develop, iterate and test design-led solutions.
Deliver: Finalize and launch the end product into the market.
Double Diamond is one of several design thinking frameworks. Find out more in 10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview .
There are several design thinking methods that you can choose from, depending on what stage of the process you’re in. Here are a few common design thinking methods:
User Interviews: to understand user needs, pain points, attitudes and behaviors.
5 Whys Method: to dig deeper into problems to diagnose the root cause.
User Observations: to understand how users behave in real life (as opposed to what they say they do).
Affinity Diagramming: to organize research findings.
Empathy Mapping: to empathize with users based on research insights.
Journey Mapping: to visualize a user’s experience as they solve a problem.
6 Thinking Hats: to encourage a group to think about a problem or solution from multiple perspectives.
Brainstorming: to generate ideas.
Prototyping: to make abstract ideas more tangible and test them.
Dot Voting: to select ideas.
Start applying these methods to your work today with the Design Thinking template bundle .
For most of the design thinking process, you will need basic office stationery:
Pen and paper
Sticky notes
Whiteboard and markers
Print-outs of templates and canvases as needed (such as empathy maps, journey maps, feedback capture grid etc.) You can also draw these out manually.
Prototyping materials such as UI stencils, string, clay, Lego bricks, sticky tapes, scissors and glue.
A space to work in.
You can conduct design thinking workshops remotely by:
Using collaborative software to simulate the whiteboard and sticky notes.
Using digital templates instead of printed canvases.
Download print-ready templates you can share with your team to practice design thinking today.
Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that helps teams better identify, understand, and solve business and customer problems.
When businesses prioritize and empathize with customers, they can create solutions catering to their needs. Happier customers are more likely to be loyal and organically advocate for the product.
Design thinking helps businesses develop innovative solutions that give them a competitive advantage.
Gain a competitive advantage in your business with Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .
The evolution of Design Thinking can be summarised in 8 key events from the 1960s to 2004.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Herbert Simon’s 1969 book, "The Sciences of the Artificial," has one of the earliest references to design thinking. David Kelley, founder of the design consultancy IDEO, coined the term “design thinking” and helped make it popular.
For a more comprehensive discussion on the origins of design thinking, see The History of Design Thinking .
Some organizations that have employed design thinking successfully are:
Airbnb: Airbnb used design thinking to create a platform for people to rent out their homes to travelers. The company focused on the needs of both hosts and guests . The result was a user-friendly platform to help people find and book accommodations.
PillPack: PillPack is a prescription home-delivery system. The company focused on the needs of people who take multiple medications and created a system that organizes pills by date and time. Amazon bought PillPack in 2018 for $1 billion .
Google Creative Lab: Google Creative Lab collaborated with IDEO to discover how kids physically play and learn. The team used design thinking to create Project Bloks . The project helps children develop foundational problem-solving skills "through coding experiences that are playful, tactile and collaborative.”
See more examples of design thinking and learn practical methods in Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .
Innovation essentially means a new idea. Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that helps teams develop new ideas. In other words, design thinking can lead to innovation.
Human-Centered Design is a newer term for User-Centered Design
“Human-centred design is an approach to interactive systems development that aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users, their needs and requirements, and by applying human factors/ergonomics, and usability knowledge and techniques. This approach enhances effectiveness and efficiency, improves human well-being, user satisfaction, accessibility and sustainability; and counteracts possible adverse effects of use on human health, safety and performance.”
— ISO 9241-210:2019(en), ISO (the International Organization for Standardization)
User experience expert Don Norman describes human-centered design (HCD) as a more evolved form of user-centered design (UCD). The word "users" removes their importance and treats them more like objects than people. By replacing “user” with “human,” designers can empathize better with the people for whom they are designing. Don Norman takes HCD a step further and prefers the term People-Centered Design.
Design thinking has a broader scope and takes HCD beyond the design discipline to drive innovation.
People sometimes use design thinking and human-centered design to mean the same thing. However, they are not the same. HCD is a formal discipline with a specific process used only by designers and usability engineers to design products. Design thinking borrows the design methods and applies them to problems in general.
Design Sprint condenses design thinking into a 1-week structured workshop
Google Ventures condensed the design thinking framework into a time-constrained 5-day workshop format called the Design Sprint. The sprint follows one step per day of the week:
Monday: Unpack
Tuesday: Sketch
Wednesday: Decide
Thursday: Prototype
Friday: Test
Learn more about the design sprint in Make Your UX Design Process Agile Using Google’s Methodology .
Systems Thinking is a distinct discipline with a broader approach to problem-solving
“Systems thinking is a way of exploring and developing effective action by looking at connected wholes rather than separate parts.”
— Introduction to Systems thinking, Report of GSE and GORS seminar, Civil Service Live
Both HCD and Systems Thinking are formal disciplines. Designers and usability engineers primarily use HCD. Systems thinking has applications in various fields, such as medical, environmental, political, economic, human resources, and educational systems.
HCD has a much narrower focus and aims to create and improve products. Systems thinking looks at the larger picture and aims to change entire systems.
Don Norman encourages designers to incorporate systems thinking in their work. Instead of looking at people and problems in isolation, designers must look at them from a systems point of view.
In summary, UCD and HCD refer to the same field, with the latter being a preferred phrase.
Design thinking is a broader framework that borrows methods from human-centered design to approach problems beyond the design discipline. It encourages people with different backgrounds and expertise to work together and apply the designer’s way of thinking to generate innovative solutions to problems.
Systems thinking is another approach to problem-solving that looks at the big picture instead of specific problems in isolation.
The design sprint is Google Ventures’ version of the design thinking process, structured to fit the design process in 1 week.
There are multiple design thinking frameworks, each with a different number of steps and phase names. One of the most popular frameworks is the Stanford d.School 5-stage process.
Design thinking is an iterative and non-linear process. It contains five phases: 1. Empathize, 2. Define, 3. Ideate, 4. Prototype and 5. Test. It is important to note the five stages of design thinking are not always sequential. They do not have to follow a specific order, and they can often occur in parallel or be repeated iteratively. The stages should be understood as different modes which contribute to the entire design project, rather than sequential steps.
For more details, see The 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process .
IDEO is a leading design consultancy and has developed its own version of the design thinking framework and adds the dimension of implementation in the process.
IDEO’s framework uses slightly different terms than d.school’s design thinking process and adds an extra dimension of implementation. The steps in the DeepDive™ Methodology are: Understand, Observe, Visualize, Evaluate and Implement.
IDEO’s DeepDive™ Methodology includes the following steps:
Understand: Conduct research and identify what the client needs and the market landscape
Observe: Similar to the Empathize step, teams observe people in live scenarios and conduct user research to identify their needs and pain points.
Visualize: In this step, the team visualizes new concepts. Similar to the Ideate phase, teams focus on creative, out-of-the-box and novel ideas.
Evaluate: The team prototypes ideas and evaluates them. After refining the prototypes, the team picks the most suitable one.
Implement: The team then sets about to develop the new concept for commercial use.
IDEO’s DeepDive™ is one of several design thinking frameworks. Find out more in 10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview .
Answer a Short Quiz to Earn a Gift
What are the stages in the design thinking process?
- Brainstorm, Prototype, Design, Launch, Test
- Define, Ideate, Research, Design, Test
- Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test
Why is empathy critical in the design thinking process?
- It allows designers to understand and address the real needs of users.
- It helps designers maintain control over the creative process.
- It makes sure the solution is inexpensive and easy to create.
What is the primary purpose of the prototyping phase in design thinking?
- To explore potential solutions and how they might work in real-world situations
- To finalize the product design for mass production
- To sell the idea to stakeholders with a high-fidelity (hi-fi) demonstration
What is a "wicked problem" in design thinking?
- Problems that are complex, ill-defined and have no single correct answer.
- Problems that are straightforward and have a clear, single solution.
- Problems that are tricky, but can be solved quickly with conventional methods.
Why is the iterative process important in design thinking?
- It allows design teams to use up all available resources.
- It allows for the improvement of solutions based on user feedback and testing.
- It makes sure the solution remains unchanged throughout development.
Better luck next time!
Do you want to improve your UX / UI Design skills? Join us now
Congratulations! You did amazing
You earned your gift with a perfect score! Let us send it to you.
Check Your Inbox
We’ve emailed your gift to [email protected] .
Literature on Design Thinking (DT)
Here’s the entire UX literature on Design Thinking (DT) by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:
Learn more about Design Thinking (DT)
Take a deep dive into Design Thinking (DT) with our course Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .
Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and General Electric, have rapidly adopted the design thinking approach, and design thinking is being taught at leading universities around the world, including Stanford d.school, Harvard, and MIT. What is design thinking, and why is it so popular and effective?
Design Thinking is not exclusive to designers —all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering and business have practiced it. So, why call it Design Thinking? Well, that’s because design work processes help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply human-centered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, businesses, countries and lives. And that’s what makes it so special.
The overall goal of this design thinking course is to help you design better products, services, processes, strategies, spaces, architecture, and experiences. Design thinking helps you and your team develop practical and innovative solutions for your problems. It is a human-focused , prototype-driven , innovative design process . Through this course, you will develop a solid understanding of the fundamental phases and methods in design thinking, and you will learn how to implement your newfound knowledge in your professional work life. We will give you lots of examples; we will go into case studies, videos, and other useful material, all of which will help you dive further into design thinking. In fact, this course also includes exclusive video content that we've produced in partnership with design leaders like Alan Dix, William Hudson and Frank Spillers!
This course contains a series of practical exercises that build on one another to create a complete design thinking project. The exercises are optional, but you’ll get invaluable hands-on experience with the methods you encounter in this course if you complete them, because they will teach you to take your first steps as a design thinking practitioner. What’s equally important is you can use your work as a case study for your portfolio to showcase your abilities to future employers! A portfolio is essential if you want to step into or move ahead in a career in the world of human-centered design.
Design thinking methods and strategies belong at every level of the design process . However, design thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. What’s special about design thinking is that designers and designers’ work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn, and apply these human-centered techniques in solving problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, in our businesses, in our countries, and in our lives.
That means that design thinking is not only for designers but also for creative employees , freelancers , and business leaders . It’s for anyone who seeks to infuse an approach to innovation that is powerful, effective and broadly accessible, one that can be integrated into every level of an organization, product, or service so as to drive new alternatives for businesses and society.
You earn a verifiable and industry-trusted Course Certificate once you complete the course. You can highlight them on your resume, CV, LinkedIn profile or your website .
All open-source articles on Design Thinking (DT)
What is design thinking and why is it so popular.
- 1.6k shares
Personas – A Simple Introduction
- 1.5k shares
Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define the Problem and Interpret the Results
- 1.3k shares
What is Ideation – and How to Prepare for Ideation Sessions
Affinity Diagrams: How to Cluster Your Ideas and Reveal Insights
- 1.2k shares
- 2 years ago
Stage 4 in the Design Thinking Process: Prototype
- 3 years ago
Stage 3 in the Design Thinking Process: Ideate
- 4 years ago
Stage 1 in the Design Thinking Process: Empathise with Your Users
Empathy Map – Why and How to Use It
What Is Empathy and Why Is It So Important in Design Thinking?
10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview
Define and Frame Your Design Challenge by Creating Your Point Of View and Ask “How Might We”
Design Thinking: Get Started with Prototyping
- 1.1k shares
5 Common Low-Fidelity Prototypes and Their Best Practices
Design Thinking: New Innovative Thinking for New Problems
The History of Design Thinking
Test Your Prototypes: How to Gather Feedback and Maximize Learning
The Ultimate Guide to Understanding UX Roles and Which One You Should Go For
- 10 mths ago
Stage 5 in the Design Thinking Process: Test
What Are Wicked Problems and How Might We Solve Them?
Open Access—Link to us!
We believe in Open Access and the democratization of knowledge . Unfortunately, world-class educational materials such as this page are normally hidden behind paywalls or in expensive textbooks.
If you want this to change , cite this page , link to us, or join us to help us democratize design knowledge !
Privacy Settings
Our digital services use necessary tracking technologies, including third-party cookies, for security, functionality, and to uphold user rights. Optional cookies offer enhanced features, and analytics.
Experience the full potential of our site that remembers your preferences and supports secure sign-in.
Governs the storage of data necessary for maintaining website security, user authentication, and fraud prevention mechanisms.
Enhanced Functionality
Saves your settings and preferences, like your location, for a more personalized experience.
Referral Program
We use cookies to enable our referral program, giving you and your friends discounts.
Error Reporting
We share user ID with Bugsnag and NewRelic to help us track errors and fix issues.
Optimize your experience by allowing us to monitor site usage. You’ll enjoy a smoother, more personalized journey without compromising your privacy.
Analytics Storage
Collects anonymous data on how you navigate and interact, helping us make informed improvements.
Differentiates real visitors from automated bots, ensuring accurate usage data and improving your website experience.
Lets us tailor your digital ads to match your interests, making them more relevant and useful to you.
Advertising Storage
Stores information for better-targeted advertising, enhancing your online ad experience.
Personalization Storage
Permits storing data to personalize content and ads across Google services based on user behavior, enhancing overall user experience.
Advertising Personalization
Allows for content and ad personalization across Google services based on user behavior. This consent enhances user experiences.
Enables personalizing ads based on user data and interactions, allowing for more relevant advertising experiences across Google services.
Receive more relevant advertisements by sharing your interests and behavior with our trusted advertising partners.
Enables better ad targeting and measurement on Meta platforms, making ads you see more relevant.
Allows for improved ad effectiveness and measurement through Meta’s Conversions API, ensuring privacy-compliant data sharing.
LinkedIn Insights
Tracks conversions, retargeting, and web analytics for LinkedIn ad campaigns, enhancing ad relevance and performance.
LinkedIn CAPI
Enhances LinkedIn advertising through server-side event tracking, offering more accurate measurement and personalization.
Google Ads Tag
Tracks ad performance and user engagement, helping deliver ads that are most useful to you.
Share Knowledge, Get Respect!
or copy link
Cite according to academic standards
Simply copy and paste the text below into your bibliographic reference list, onto your blog, or anywhere else. You can also just hyperlink to this page.
New to UX Design? We’re Giving You a Free ebook!
Download our free ebook The Basics of User Experience Design to learn about core concepts of UX design.
In 9 chapters, we’ll cover: conducting user interviews, design thinking, interaction design, mobile UX design, usability, UX research, and many more!
Center for Teaching Innovation
Ai in assignment design.
Using generative artificial intelligence (AI) can be both productive and limiting—it can help students to create and revise content, yet it also has the potential to undermine the process by which students create. When incorporated effectively into assignments, generative AI can be leveraged to stimulate students' ability to apply essential knowledge and develop critical thinking skills.
As you explore the possible uses of generative AI in your course, note that establishing a general familiarity with generative AI and being mindful of accessibility and ethical concerns will be helpful.
The following process may help you determine how to best incorporate generative AI into your course assignments.
Affirm What You Actually Want to Assess
As you decide how you might incorporate AI into your course, it’s important to revisit your current course assessment plan, most importantly your course learning outcomes —that is, the skills and knowledge you want students to learn and demonstrate by the end of your course. Once you have a clear idea of the specific skills/knowledge you want to assess, the following questions can help determine whether or not your current assignments are effective and assessing what you want them to assess:
- Does my assignment call for the same type of thinking skills that are articulated in my class outcomes? For example, if my course learning outcome calls for students to analyze major themes in a work, is there risk of my final assignment prompting students to do more (e.g., synthesize multiple themes across multiple works) or to do less (e.g., merely identify a theme) than this outcome? If so, there may be a misalignment that can easily be addressed.
- Does my assignment call for the same type of thinking skills that students have actually practiced in class? For example, if I am asking students to generate a research prospectus, have I given them adequate opportunity to develop—and receive feedback on—this skill in class?
- Depending on your discipline, is there a need for an additional course outcome that honors what students now need to know about the use of generative AI in your course/field?
Explore When & How Generative AI Can Facilitate Student Learning
Once you have affirmed your learning outcomes and ensured that your assignments are properly aligned with those outcomes, think about if, when, and how it might make sense to incorporate generative AI. Is there a way to leverage generative AI to engage students in deeper learning, provide meaningful practice, or help scaffold your assignments?
Consider the usefulness of generative AI to serve as:
- Have students analyze AI-generated texts to articulate what constitutes “good” (and not so good) responses to prompts.
- Have students analyze AI-generated texts and engage in error analysis to develop more nuanced and discipline-specific writing skills.
- Leverage the use of generative AI platforms to help students become more discerning. This can help students develop the critical thinking and information literacy skills required to effectively and responsibly use such platforms.
- Have students revise AI-generated texts to develop critical thinking skills.
- Have students engage with a generative AI platform as a tutor.
- Facilitate students’ responsible, self-guided use of generative AI to develop select discipline specific skills (e.g., coding in computer science courses)
- Have students use generative AI to off-load repetitive tasks.
- Have students use generative AI to conduct preliminary analysis of data sets to confirm broad takeaways and affirm that their more nuanced analysis is heading in the right direction.
Identify When Generative AI Cannot Facilitate Student Learning
It is often the case that students cannot—or should not—leverage generative AI to promote or demonstrate their own learning. To help ensure that your assignment design highlights students’ unique perspectives and underscores the importance of a (non-generative AI informed) discipline-specific process, consider how to emphasize metacognition, authentic application, thematic connection, or personal reflection.
Even if another part of an assignment calls for the use of generative AI, the following strategies may supplement the uses of AI highlighted above and foster deep and meaningful learning:
- Have students identify the successes and challenges they experienced throughout the completion of a project.
- Have students set incremental goals throughout a project, highlighting next steps of a discipline-specific process, resources they used, and the steps about which they are enthusiastic/nervous.
- Have students self-assess their work, identifying strengths and weaknesses of their product/effort.
- Have students engage in problem-based learning projects, ideally in authentic settings (e.g., problems that focus on our local community, real-world challenges, real-world industries, etc.).
- Have students present projects (and engage with) authentic audiences (e.g., real stakeholders, discipline-specific research partners, native-speaking language partners, etc.)
- Have students connect select reading(s) to course experiences (e.g., labs, field experiences, class discussions).
- Leverage Canvas-based tools that promote student-to-student interactions (e.g., Hypothesis for social annotation or FeedbackFruits for peer review and feedback).
- Have students provide a reflective rationale for choices made throughout the completion of a class project (e.g., an artist statement, response to a reflection prompt about personal relevance of source selections)
- Have students connect course experiences/motivations to their own lived experiences.
Create Transparent Assignment Materials
Once you have thought about whether or not generative AI can be effectively incorporated into your assignments, it is important to create assignment materials that are transparent (Winkelmes, et al., 2019). Specifically, this means creating ways to communicate to students the task you are are requiring, along with its purpose and evaluative criteria:
- Task. Students will benefit from having a clear and accessible set of directions for the project or assignment you are asking them to complete.
- Purpose. Students are often more motivated when they understand why a particular task is worth doing and what specific knowledge or skills they will develop by completing the assigned task.
- Evaluative Criteria. Students benefit from having a clear sense of how their work will be evaluated and a full understanding of what good work looks like.
Communicate Your Expectations for Generative AI Use
Regardless of the extent to which you incorporate the use of generative AI into your assignment design, it is essential to communicate your expectations to students. Sharing clear directions for assignments, communicating how students can be successful in your class, and promoting academic integrity serves both you and your students well.
Example Assignment Policy Language for Generative AI Use
The following language on the use of generative AI may be helpful as you create directions for specific assignments. Please note that the following sample language does not reflect general, course-level perspectives on the use of generative AI tools. For sample course-level statements, see AI & Academic Integrity .
Prohibiting AI Use for a Specific Assignment
Allowing the use of generative ai for a specific assignment with attribution.
For full details on how to properly cite AI-generated work, please see the APA Style article, How to Cite ChatGPT . "
Encouraging the Use of Generative AI for a Specific Assignment with Attribution
For full details on how to properly cite AI- generated work, please see the APA Style article, How to Cite ChatGPT ."
Confer with Colleagues
There is almost always a benefit to discussing an assessment plan with colleagues, either within or beyond your department. Remember, too, that CTI offers consultations on any topic related to teaching and learning, and we are delighted to collaboratively review your course assessment plan. Visit our Consultations page to learn more, or contact us to set up a consultation.
2023 EducaUse Horizon Report | Teaching and Learning Edition. (2023, May 8). EDUCAUSE Library. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2023/5/2023-educause-horizon-report-teaching-and-learning-edition
Antoniak, M. (2023, June 22). Using large language models with care - AI2 blog. Medium. https://blog.allenai.org/using-large-language-models-with-care-eeb17b0aed27
Dinnar, S. M., Dede, C., Johnson, E., Straub, C. and Korjus, K. (2021), Artificial Intelligence and Technology in Teaching Negotiation. Negotiation Journal, 37: 65-82. https://doi.org/10.1111/nejo.12351
Jensen, T., Dede, C., Tsiwah, F., & Thompson, K. (2023, July 27). Who Does the Thinking: The Role of Generative AI in Higher Education. YouTube. International Association of Universities. Retrieved July 27, 2023.
OpenAI. (2023, February 16.). How should AI systems behave, and who should decide? https://openai.com/blog/how-should-ai-systems-behave
Winkelmes, M. A., Boye, A., & Tapp, S. (2019). Transparent design in higher education
teaching and leadership: A guide to implementing the transparency framework institution-wide to improve learning and retention. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing .
- Columbia University in the City of New York
- Office of Teaching, Learning, and Innovation
- University Policies
- Columbia Online
- Academic Calendar
- Resources and Technology
- Resources and Guides
Getting Started with Creative Assignments
Creative teaching and learning can be cultivated in any course context to increase student engagement and motivation, and promote thinking skills that are critical to problem-solving and innovation. This resource features examples of Columbia faculty who teach creatively and have reimagined their course assessments to allow students to demonstrate their learning in creative ways. Drawing on these examples, this resource provides suggestions for creating a classroom environment that supports student engagement in creative activities and assignments.
On this page:
- The What and Why of Creative Assignments
Examples of Creative Teaching and Learning at Columbia
- How To Get Started
Cite this resource: Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2022). Getting Started with Creative Assignments. Columbia University. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/creative-assignments/
The What and Why of Creative Assignments
Creative assignments encourage students to think in innovative ways as they demonstrate their learning. Thinking creatively involves combining or synthesizing information or course materials in new ways and is characterized by “a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking, and risk-taking” (AAC&U). It is associated with imagination and originality, and additional characteristics include: being open to new ideas and perspectives, believing alternatives exist, withholding judgment, generating multiple approaches to problems, and trying new ways to generate ideas (DiYanni, 2015: 41). Creative thinking is considered an important skill alongside critical thinking in tackling contemporary problems. Critical thinking allows students to evaluate the information presented to them while creative thinking is a process that allows students to generate new ideas and innovate.
Creative assignments can be integrated into any course regardless of discipline. Examples include the use of infographic assignments in Nursing (Chicca and Chunta, 2020) and Chemistry (Kothari, Castañeda, and McNeil, 2019); podcasting assignments in Social Work (Hitchcock, Sage & Sage, 2021); digital storytelling assignments in Psychology (Sheafer, 2017) and Sociology (Vaughn and Leon, 2021); and incorporating creative writing in the economics classroom (Davis, 2019) or reflective writing into Calculus assignment ( Gerstle, 2017) just to name a few. In a 2014 study, organic chemistry students who elected to begin their lab reports with a creative narrative were more excited to learn and earned better grades (Henry, Owens, and Tawney, 2015). In a public policy course, students who engaged in additional creative problem-solving exercises that included imaginative scenarios and alternative solution-finding showed greater interest in government reform and attentiveness to civic issues (Wukich and Siciliano, 2014).
The benefits of creative assignments include increased student engagement, motivation, and satisfaction (Snyder et al., 2013: 165); and furthered student learning of course content (Reynolds, Stevens, and West, 2013). These types of assignments promote innovation, academic integrity, student self-awareness/ metacognition (e.g., when students engage in reflection through journal assignments), and can be made authentic as students develop and apply skills to real-world situations.
When instructors give students open-ended assignments, they provide opportunities for students to think creatively as they work on a deliverable. They “unlock potential” (Ranjan & Gabora and Beghetto in Gregerson et al., 2013) for students to synthesize their knowledge and propose novel solutions. This promotes higher-level thinking as outlined in the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy’s “create” cognitive process category: “putting elements together to form a novel coherent whole or make an original product,” this involves generating ideas, planning, and producing something new.
The examples that follow highlight creative assignments in the Columbia University classroom. The featured Columbia faculty taught creatively – they tried new strategies, purposefully varied classroom activities and assessment modalities, and encouraged their students to take control of what and how they were learning (James & Brookfield, 2014: 66).
Dr. Cruz changed her course assessment by “moving away from high stakes assessments like a final paper or a final exam, to more open-ended and creative models of assessments.” Students were given the opportunity to synthesize their course learning, with options on topic and format of how to demonstrate their learning and to do so individually or in groups. They explored topics that were meaningful to them and related to the course material. Dr. Cruz noted that “This emphasis on playfulness and creativity led to fantastic final projects including a graphic novel interpretation, a video essay that applied critical theory to multiple texts, and an interactive virtual museum.” Students “took the opportunity to use their creative skills, or the skills they were interested in exploring because some of them had to develop new skills to produce these projects.” (Dr. Cruz; Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning , Season 3, Episode 6). Along with their projects, students submitted an artist’s statement, where they had to explain and justify their choices.
Dr. Cruz noted that grading creative assignments require advanced planning. In her case, she worked closely with her TAs to develop a rubric that was shared with students in advance for full transparency and emphasized the importance of students connecting ideas to analytical arguments discussed in the class.
Watch Dr. Cruz’s 2021 Symposium presentation. Listen to Dr. Cruz talk about The Power of Blended Classrooms in Season 3, Episode 6 of the Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning podcast. Get a glimpse into Dr. Cruz’s online classroom and her creative teaching and the design of learning experiences that enhanced critical thinking, creativity, curiosity, and community by viewing her Voices of Hybrid and Online Teaching and Learning submission.
As part of his standard practice, Dr. Yesilevskiy scaffolds assignments – from less complex to more complex – to ensure students integrate the concepts they learn in the class into their projects or new experiments. For example, in Laboratory 1, Dr. Yesilevskiy slowly increases the amount of independence in each experiment over the semester: students are given a full procedure in the first experiment and by course end, students are submitting new experiment proposals to Dr. Yesilevskiy for approval. This is creative thinking in action. Students not only learned how to “replicate existing experiments, but also to formulate and conduct new ones.”
Watch Dr. Yesilevskiy’s 2021 Symposium presentation.
How Do I Get Started?: Strategies to Support Creative Assignments
The previous section showcases examples of creative assignments in action at Columbia. To help you support such creative assignments in your classroom, this section details three strategies to support creative assignments and creative thinking. Firstly, re-consider the design of your assignments to optimize students’ creative output. Secondly, scaffold creative assignments using low-stakes classroom activities that build creative capacity. Finally, cultivate a classroom environment that supports creative thinking.
Design Considerations for Creative Assignments
Thoughtfully designed open-ended assignments and evaluation plans encourage students to demonstrate their learning in authentic ways. When designing creative assignments, consider the following suggestions for structuring and communicating to your students about the assignment.
Set clear expectations . Students may feel lost in the ambiguity and complexity of an open-ended assignment that requires them to create something new. Communicate the creative outcomes and learning objectives for the assignments (Ranjan & Gabora, 2013), and how students will be expected to draw on their learning in the course. Articulare how much flexibility and choice students have in determining what they work on and how they work on it. Share the criteria or a rubric that will be used to evaluate student deliverables. See the CTL’s resource Incorporating Rubrics Into Your Feedback and Grading Practices . If planning to evaluate creative thinking, consider adapting the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ creative thinking VALUE rubric .
Structure the project to sustain engagement and promote integrity. Consider how the project might be broken into smaller assignments that build upon each other and culminate in a synthesis project. The example presented above from Dr. Yesilevskiy’s teaching highlights how he scaffolded lab complexity, progressing from structured to student-driven. See the section below “Activities to Prepare Students for Creative Assignments” for sample activities to scaffold this work.
Create opportunities for ongoing feedback . Provide feedback at all phases of the assignment from idea inception through milestones to completion. Leverage office hours for individual or group conversations and feedback on project proposals, progress, and issues. See the CTL’s resource on Feedback for Learning . Consider creating opportunities for structured peer review for students to give each other feedback on their work. Students benefit from learning about their peers’ projects, and seeing different perspectives and approaches to accomplishing the open-ended assignment. See the CTL’s resource Peer Review: Intentional Design for Any Course Context .
Share resources to support students in their work. Ensure all students have access to the resources they will need to be successful on the assigned project. Connect students with campus resources that can help them accomplish the project’s objectives. For instance, if students are working on a research project – connect them to the Library instruction modules “ From Books to Bytes: Navigating the Research Ecosystem ,” encourage them to schedule a consultation with a specialist for research support through Columbia Libraries , or seek out writing support. If students will need equipment to complete their project, remind them of campus resources such as makerspaces (e.g., The Makerspace @ Columbia in Room 254 Engineering Terrace/Mudd; Design Center at Barnard College); borrowing equipment (e.g., Instructional Media and Technology Services (IMATS) at Barnard; Gabe M. Wiener Music & Arts Library ).
Ask students to submit a self-reflection with their project. Encourage students to reflect on their process and the decisions they made in order to complete the project. Provide guiding questions that have students reflect on their learning, make meaning, and engage their metacognitive thinking skills (see the CTL’s resource of Metacognition ). Students can be asked to apply the rubric to their work or to submit a creative statement along with their work that describes their intent and ownership of the project.
Collect feedback from students and iterate. Invite students to give feedback on the assigned creative project, as well as the classroom environment and creative activities used. Tell students how you will use their suggestions to make improvements to activities and assignments, and make adjustments to the classroom environment. See the CTL’s resource on Early and Mid-Semester Student Feedback .
Low-Stakes Activities to Prepare Students for Creative Assignments
The activities described below are meant to be scaffolded opportunities leading to a larger creative project. They are low-stakes, non-graded activities that make time in the classroom for students to think, brainstorm, and create (Desrochers and Zell, 2012) and prepare them to do the creative thinking needed to complete course assignments. The activities can be adapted for any course context, with or without the use of technology, and can be done individually or collaboratively (see the CTL’s resource on Collaborative Learning to explore digital tools that are available for group work).
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a process that students can engage in to generate as many ideas as possible related to a topic of study or an assignment topic (Sweet et al., 2013: 87). As they engage in this messy and jugement-free work, students explore a range of possibilities. Brainstorming reveals students’ prior knowledge (Ambrose et al., 2010: 29). Brainstorm activities are useful early on to help create a classroom culture rooted in creativity while also serving as a potential icebreaker activity that helps instructors learn more about what prior knowledge and experiences students are bringing to the course or unit of study. This activity can be done individually or in groups, and in class or asynchronously. Components may include:
- Prompt students to list off (individually or collaboratively) their ideas on a whiteboard, free write in a Google Doc or some other digital space.
- Provide formative feedback to assist students to further develop their ideas.
- Invite students to reflect on the brainstorm process, look over their ideas and determine which idea to explore further.
Mind mapping
A mind map, also known as a cognitive or concept map, allows students to visually display their thinking and knowledge organization, through lines connecting concepts, arrows showing relationships, and other visual cues (Sweet et al., 2013: 89; Ambrose et al. 2010: 63). This challenges students to synthesize and be creative as they display words, ideas, tasks or principles (Barkley, 2010: 219-225). A mind mapping activity can be done individually or in groups, and in class or asynchronously. This activity can be an extension of a brainstorming session, whereby students take an idea from their brainstormed list and further develop it.
Components of a mind mapping activity may include:
- Prompt students to create a map of their thinking on a topic, concept, or question. This can be done on paper, on a whiteboard, or with digital mind mapping or whiteboard tools such as Google Drawing.
- Provide formative feedback on the mind maps.
- Invite students to reflect on their mind map, and determine where to go next.
Digital storytelling
Digital storytelling involves integrating multimedia (images, text, video, audio, etc.) and narrative to produce immersive stories that connect with course content. Student-produced stories can promote engagement and learning in a way that is both personal and universal (McLellan, 2007). Digital storytelling contributes to learning through student voice and creativity in constructing meaning (Rossiter and Garcia, 2010).
Tools such as the CTL-developed Mediathread as well as EdDiscussion support collaborative annotation of media objects. These annotations can be used in writing and discussions, which can involve creating a story. For freeform formats, digital whiteboards allow students to drop in different text and media and make connections between these elements. Such storytelling can be done collaboratively or simply shared during class. Finally, EdBlogs can be used for a blog format, or Google Slides if a presentation format is better suited for the learning objective.
Asking questions to explore new possibilities
Tap into student imagination, stimulate curiosity, and create memorable learning experiences by asking students to pose “What if?” “why” and “how” questions – how might things be done differently; what will a situation look like if it is viewed from a new perspective?; or what could a new approach to solving a problem look like? (James & Brookfield, 2014: 163). Powerful questions are open-ended ones where the answer is not immediately apparent; such questions encourage students to think about a topic in new ways, and they promote learning as students work to answer them (James & Brookfield, 2014: 163). Setting aside time for students to ask lots of questions in the classroom and bringing in questions posed on CourseWorks Discussions or EdDiscussion sends the message to students that their questions matter and play a role in learning.
Cultivate Creative Thinking in the Classroom Environment
Create a classroom environment that encourages experimentation and thinking from new and diverse perspectives. This type of environment encourages students to share their ideas without inhibition and personalize the meaning-making process. “Creative environments facilitate intentional acts of divergent (idea generation, collaboration, and design thinking) and convergent (analysis of ideas, products, and content created) thinking processes.” (Sweet et al., 2013: 20)
Encourage risk-taking and learning from mistakes . Taking risks in the classroom can be anxiety inducing so students will benefit from reassurance that their creativity and all ideas are welcome. When students bring up unexpected ideas, rather than redirecting or dismissing, seize it as an opportunity for a conversation in which students can share, challenge, and affirm ideas (Beghetto, 2013). Let students know that they can make mistakes, “think outside of the box” without penalty (Desrochers and Zell, 2012), and embrace failure seeing it as a learning opportunity.
Model creative thinking . Model curiosity and how to ask powerful questions, and encourage students to be curious about everything (Synder et al., 2013, DiYanni, 2015). Give students a glimpse into your own creative thinking process – how you would approach an open-ended question, problem, or assignment? Turn your own mistakes into teachable moments. By modeling creative thinking, you are giving students permission to engage in this type of thinking.
Build a community that supports the creative classroom environment. Have students get to know and interact with each other so that they become comfortable asking questions and taking risks in front of and with their peers. See the CTL’s resource on Community Building in the Classroom . This is especially important if you are planning to have students collaborate on creative activities and assignments and/or engage in peer review of each other’s work.
Plan for play. Play is integral to learning (Cavanagh, 2021; Eyler, 2018; Tatter, 2019). Play cultivates a low stress, high trust, inclusive environment, as students build relationships with each. This allows students to feel more comfortable in the classroom and motivates them to tackle more difficult content (Forbes, 2021). Set aside time for play (Ranjan & Gabora, 2013; Sinfield, Burns, & Abegglen, 2018). Design for play with purpose grounded in learning goals. Create a structured play session during which students experiment with a new topic, idea, or tool and connect it to curricular content or their learning experience. Play can be facilitated through educational games such as puzzles, video games, trivia competitions, scavenger hunts or role-playing activities in which students actively apply knowledge and skills as they act out their role (Eyler, 2018; Barkley, 2010). For an example of role-playing games explore Reacting to the Past , an active learning pedagogy of role-playing games developed by Mark Carnes at Barnard College.
The CTL is here to help!
CTL consultants are happy to support instructors as they design activities and assignments that promote creative thinking. Email [email protected] to schedule a consultation.
Ambrose et al. (2010). How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Jossey-Bass.
Barkley, E. F., Major, C. H., and Cross, K. P. (2014). Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty .
Barkley, E. F. (2010) Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty.
Beghetto, R. (2013). Expect the Unexpected: Teaching for Creativity in the Micromoments. In M.B. Gregerson, H.T. Snyder, and J.C. Kaufman (Eds.). Teaching Creatively and Teaching Creativity . Springer.
Cavanagh, S. R. (2021). How to Play in the College Classroom in a Pandemic, and Why You Should . The Chronicle of Higher Education. February 9, 2021.
Chicca, J. and Chunta, K, (2020). Engaging Students with Visual Stories: Using Infographics in Nursing Education . Teaching and Learning in Nursing. 15(1), 32-36.
Davis, M. E. (2019). Poetry and economics: Creativity, engagement and learning in the economics classroom. International Review of Economics Education. Volume 30.
Desrochers, C. G. and Zell, D. (2012). Gave projects, tests, or assignments that required original or creative thinking! POD-IDEA Center Notes on Instruction.
DiYanni, R. (2015). Critical and creative thinking : A brief guide for teachers . John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Eyler, J. R. (2018). How Humans Learn. The Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching. West Virginia University Press.
Forbes, L. K. (2021). The Process of Play in Learning in Higher Education: A Phenomenological Study. Journal of Teaching and Learning. Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 57-73.
Gerstle, K. (2017). Incorporating Meaningful Reflection into Calculus Assignments. PRIMUS. Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies. 29(1), 71-81.
Gregerson, M. B., Snyder, H. T., and Kaufman, J. C. (2013). Teaching Creatively and Teaching Creativity . Springer.
Henry, M., Owens, E. A., and Tawney, J. G. (2015). Creative Report Writing in Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Laboratory Inspires Non Majors. Journal of Chemical Education , 92, 90-95.
Hitchcock, L. I., Sage, T., Lynch, M. and Sage, M. (2021). Podcasting as a Pedagogical Tool for Experiential Learning in Social Work Education. Journal of Teaching in Social Work . 41(2). 172-191.
James, A., & Brookfield, S. D. (2014). Engaging imagination : Helping students become creative and reflective thinkers . John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Jackson, N. (2008). Tackling the Wicked Problem of Creativity in Higher Education.
Jackson, N. (2006). Creativity in higher education. SCEPTrE Scholarly Paper , 3 , 1-25.
Kleiman, P. (2008). Towards transformation: conceptions of creativity in higher education.
Kothari, D., Hall, A. O., Castañeda, C. A., and McNeil, A. J. (2019). Connecting Organic Chemistry Concepts with Real-World Context by Creating Infographics. Journal of Chemistry Education. 96(11), 2524-2527.
McLellan, H. (2007). Digital Storytelling in Higher Education. Journal of Computing in Higher Education. 19, 65-79.
Ranjan, A., & Gabora, L. (2013). Creative Ideas for Actualizing Student Potential. In M.B. Gregerson, H.T. Snyder, and J.C. Kaufman (Eds.). Teaching Creatively and Teaching Creativity . Springer.
Rossiter, M. and Garcia, P. A. (2010). Digital Storytelling: A New Player on the Narrative Field. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. No. 126, Summer 2010.
Sheafer, V. (2017). Using digital storytelling to teach psychology: A preliminary investigation. Psychology Learning & Teaching. 16(1), 133-143.
Sinfield, S., Burns, B., & Abegglen, S. (2018). Exploration: Becoming Playful – The Power of a Ludic Module. In A. James and C. Nerantzi (Eds.). The Power of Play in Higher Education . Palgrave Macmillan.
Reynolds, C., Stevens, D. D., and West, E. (2013). “I’m in a Professional School! Why Are You Making Me Do This?” A Cross-Disciplinary Study of the Use of Creative Classroom Projects on Student Learning. College Teaching. 61: 51-59.
Sweet, C., Carpenter, R., Blythe, H., and Apostel, S. (2013). Teaching Applied Creative Thinking: A New Pedagogy for the 21st Century. Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press Inc.
Tatter, G. (2019). Playing to Learn: How a pedagogy of play can enliven the classroom, for students of all ages . Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Vaughn, M. P. and Leon, D. (2021). The Personal Is Political Art: Using Digital Storytelling to Teaching Sociology of Sexualities. Teaching Sociology. 49(3), 245-255.
Wukich, C. and Siciliano, M. D. (2014). Problem Solving and Creativity in Public Policy Courses: Promoting Interest and Civic Engagement. Journal of Political Science Education . 10, 352-368.
CTL resources and technology for you.
- Overview of all CTL Resources and Technology
This website uses cookies to identify users, improve the user experience and requires cookies to work. By continuing to use this website, you consent to Columbia University's use of cookies and similar technologies, in accordance with the Columbia University Website Cookie Notice .
Eberly Center
Teaching excellence & educational innovation, creating assignments.
Here are some general suggestions and questions to consider when creating assignments. There are also many other resources in print and on the web that provide examples of interesting, discipline-specific assignment ideas.
Consider your learning objectives.
What do you want students to learn in your course? What could they do that would show you that they have learned it? To determine assignments that truly serve your course objectives, it is useful to write out your objectives in this form: I want my students to be able to ____. Use active, measurable verbs as you complete that sentence (e.g., compare theories, discuss ramifications, recommend strategies), and your learning objectives will point you towards suitable assignments.
Design assignments that are interesting and challenging.
This is the fun side of assignment design. Consider how to focus students’ thinking in ways that are creative, challenging, and motivating. Think beyond the conventional assignment type! For example, one American historian requires students to write diary entries for a hypothetical Nebraska farmwoman in the 1890s. By specifying that students’ diary entries must demonstrate the breadth of their historical knowledge (e.g., gender, economics, technology, diet, family structure), the instructor gets students to exercise their imaginations while also accomplishing the learning objectives of the course (Walvoord & Anderson, 1989, p. 25).
Double-check alignment.
After creating your assignments, go back to your learning objectives and make sure there is still a good match between what you want students to learn and what you are asking them to do. If you find a mismatch, you will need to adjust either the assignments or the learning objectives. For instance, if your goal is for students to be able to analyze and evaluate texts, but your assignments only ask them to summarize texts, you would need to add an analytical and evaluative dimension to some assignments or rethink your learning objectives.
Name assignments accurately.
Students can be misled by assignments that are named inappropriately. For example, if you want students to analyze a product’s strengths and weaknesses but you call the assignment a “product description,” students may focus all their energies on the descriptive, not the critical, elements of the task. Thus, it is important to ensure that the titles of your assignments communicate their intention accurately to students.
Consider sequencing.
Think about how to order your assignments so that they build skills in a logical sequence. Ideally, assignments that require the most synthesis of skills and knowledge should come later in the semester, preceded by smaller assignments that build these skills incrementally. For example, if an instructor’s final assignment is a research project that requires students to evaluate a technological solution to an environmental problem, earlier assignments should reinforce component skills, including the ability to identify and discuss key environmental issues, apply evaluative criteria, and find appropriate research sources.
Think about scheduling.
Consider your intended assignments in relation to the academic calendar and decide how they can be reasonably spaced throughout the semester, taking into account holidays and key campus events. Consider how long it will take students to complete all parts of the assignment (e.g., planning, library research, reading, coordinating groups, writing, integrating the contributions of team members, developing a presentation), and be sure to allow sufficient time between assignments.
Check feasibility.
Is the workload you have in mind reasonable for your students? Is the grading burden manageable for you? Sometimes there are ways to reduce workload (whether for you or for students) without compromising learning objectives. For example, if a primary objective in assigning a project is for students to identify an interesting engineering problem and do some preliminary research on it, it might be reasonable to require students to submit a project proposal and annotated bibliography rather than a fully developed report. If your learning objectives are clear, you will see where corners can be cut without sacrificing educational quality.
Articulate the task description clearly.
If an assignment is vague, students may interpret it any number of ways – and not necessarily how you intended. Thus, it is critical to clearly and unambiguously identify the task students are to do (e.g., design a website to help high school students locate environmental resources, create an annotated bibliography of readings on apartheid). It can be helpful to differentiate the central task (what students are supposed to produce) from other advice and information you provide in your assignment description.
Establish clear performance criteria.
Different instructors apply different criteria when grading student work, so it’s important that you clearly articulate to students what your criteria are. To do so, think about the best student work you have seen on similar tasks and try to identify the specific characteristics that made it excellent, such as clarity of thought, originality, logical organization, or use of a wide range of sources. Then identify the characteristics of the worst student work you have seen, such as shaky evidence, weak organizational structure, or lack of focus. Identifying these characteristics can help you consciously articulate the criteria you already apply. It is important to communicate these criteria to students, whether in your assignment description or as a separate rubric or scoring guide . Clearly articulated performance criteria can prevent unnecessary confusion about your expectations while also setting a high standard for students to meet.
Specify the intended audience.
Students make assumptions about the audience they are addressing in papers and presentations, which influences how they pitch their message. For example, students may assume that, since the instructor is their primary audience, they do not need to define discipline-specific terms or concepts. These assumptions may not match the instructor’s expectations. Thus, it is important on assignments to specify the intended audience http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10e.cfm (e.g., undergraduates with no biology background, a potential funder who does not know engineering).
Specify the purpose of the assignment.
If students are unclear about the goals or purpose of the assignment, they may make unnecessary mistakes. For example, if students believe an assignment is focused on summarizing research as opposed to evaluating it, they may seriously miscalculate the task and put their energies in the wrong place. The same is true they think the goal of an economics problem set is to find the correct answer, rather than demonstrate a clear chain of economic reasoning. Consequently, it is important to make your objectives for the assignment clear to students.
Specify the parameters.
If you have specific parameters in mind for the assignment (e.g., length, size, formatting, citation conventions) you should be sure to specify them in your assignment description. Otherwise, students may misapply conventions and formats they learned in other courses that are not appropriate for yours.
A Checklist for Designing Assignments
Here is a set of questions you can ask yourself when creating an assignment.
- Provided a written description of the assignment (in the syllabus or in a separate document)?
- Specified the purpose of the assignment?
- Indicated the intended audience?
- Articulated the instructions in precise and unambiguous language?
- Provided information about the appropriate format and presentation (e.g., page length, typed, cover sheet, bibliography)?
- Indicated special instructions, such as a particular citation style or headings?
- Specified the due date and the consequences for missing it?
- Articulated performance criteria clearly?
- Indicated the assignment’s point value or percentage of the course grade?
- Provided students (where appropriate) with models or samples?
Adapted from the WAC Clearinghouse at http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10e.cfm .
CONTACT US to talk with an Eberly colleague in person!
- Faculty Support
- Graduate Student Support
- Canvas @ Carnegie Mellon
- Quick Links
- Assignment Design
- Office of the Provost and EVP
- Teaching and Learning
- Faculty Collaborative for Teaching Innovation
- Digital Resources for Teaching (DRT)
Sections: General Principles of Assignment Design Additional Resources
General Principles of Assignment Design
Assignments: Make Them Effective, Engaging, and Equitable. At their best, assignments are one of the most important learning experiences for students in a course. Students grapple with course content, deepen their understanding, form new ideas, connections, and questions, and show how they are achieving the course or program learning outcomes. Assignments can also affirm students' social identities, interests, and abilities in ways that foster belonging and academic success.
Characteristics of Effective, Engaging, and Equitable Assignments
- Address the central learning outcomes/objectives of your courses. This ensures the relevancy of the assignment (students won’t wonder why they’re doing it) and provides you with an assessment of student learning that tells you about the progress your students are making.
- Interesting and challenging . What assignments are most memorable to you? Chances are they asked you to apply knowledge to an interesting problem or to do it in a creative way. Assignments can be seen as more relevant when they connect to a real world problem or situation, or when students imagine they are presenting the information to a real world audience (e.g., policy makers), or when they can bring in some aspect of their own experience. Assignments can also be contextualized to reflect the values or priorities of the institution.
- Purpose: Why are you asking students to do the assignment? How does it connect with course learning objectives and support broader skill development that students can draw upon well after your class is over? Often the purpose is very clear to us but we don’t always spell it out for our students.
- Tasks: What steps will students need to take to complete the assignment successfully? Laying this out helps students organize what they need to do and when.
- Criteria for Success: What does excellence look like? This can be described through text or a rubric that aligns expectations with the key elements of the assignment.
- Utility value: How can you make adjustments that allow students to perceive the assignment has more value, either professionally, academically, or personally?
- Inclusive content: Is the assignment equally accessible to all students? If examples are drawn from the dominant culture, they are less accessible to students from other cultures. Structuring assignments so that content is equally familiar to all students reduces educational equity gaps by limiting the effects of prior knowledge and privilege.
- Flexibility and variety: Consider how much flexibility and variety you’re offering in your assignments. This allows students to show what they have learned regardless of their academic strengths or familiarity with particular assignment types. Can students choose among different formats for how they’ll present their assignment (paper, podcast or infographic); is there variety in formats across all the course assignments? Multi-modal assignments allow students to represent what they know in various ways and are therefore more equitable by design.
- Support assignments with instructional activities. Planning learning activities that support students’ best work on their assignments is another critical component. This can include having students read model articles in the style in which you are asking them to prepare their own assignment, discuss or apply the rubric to a sample paper, or break the assignment into smaller pieces so that students can get feedback from you or peers on how they are progressing. Another way to support students is to make clear the role of tools like ChatGPT: if it’s used, how can students use it effectively and responsibly? More generally, all major assignments provide opportunities for important discussions about academic integrity and its relevance to work in one’s discipline, higher education, and personal development.
- Provide opportunities for feedback and revision (especially if high-stakes) . Students may receive feedback on their progress or drafts in a variety of ways: peer, faculty, or a library partner. The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning identifies four characteristics of effective feedback: Targeted and Concise; Focused; Action-Oriented; and Timely.
For assignments that ask students to write in the style of a particular discipline and draw upon research, SCU’s Success in Writing, Information, and Research Literacy (SWIRL) project has developed guidance for faculty in assignment design and instruction to improve student writing and critical use of information.
You can download the WRITE assignment design tool and learn more at the SWIRL website. Members of the SWIRL team welcome individual consultations with faculty on assignment design. You are welcome to contact them for feedback on any assignment you’re designing.
Additional Resources:
Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2021). Feedback for Learning. Columbia University. Retrieved [February 26, 2024] from https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/feedback-for-learning/
Hobbs H. T., Singer-Freeman K. E., Robinson C. (2021). Considering the effects of assignment choices on equity gaps. Research and Practice in Assessment, 16 (1), 49–62.
SWIRL : For assignments that ask students to write in the style of a particular discipline and draw upon research, SCU’s Success in Writing, Information, and Research Literacy (SWIRL) project has developed guidance for faculty in assignment design and instruction to improve student writing and critical use of information. You can download the WRITE assignment design tool and learn more at the SWIRL website.
Transparency in Higher Education Project: Examples and Resources. Copyright © 2009-2023 M.A. Winkelmes. Retrieved [February 26, 2024] from https://tilthighered.com/tiltexamplesandresources
Winkelmes, M., Boye, A., & Tapp, S. (Eds.). (2019). Transparent design in higher education teaching and leadership. Stylus Publishing.
Page authors: Chris Bachen
Last updated: March 5, 2024
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ORLD SSOCIATION OF ECHNOLOGY EACHERS) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The recommended way to navigate this website |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
The TILT framework offers a straightforward approach to assignment design that has been shown to improve academic confidence and success, sense of belonging, and metacognitive awareness by making the learning process clear to students (Winkelmes et al., 2016). ... To make effective use of any new technology, it is important to reflect on our ...
An authentic assessment provides opportunities for students to practice, consult resources, learn from feedback, and refine their performances and products accordingly (Wiggins 1990, 1998, 2014). Authentic assignments ask students to "do" the subject with an audience in mind and apply their learning in a new situation.
A Framework for Designing Assignments in the Age of AI. The emergence of AI tools like ChatGPT presents both challenges and opportunities for thinking about how we teach critical thinking and writing across disciplines. There is no one way to redesign assignments; choices about assignment design should always be tied to learning goals for a course.
By designing assignments that incorporate generative AI technology, instructors can provide students with opportunities to explore, create, and problem-solve. However, as an instructor, you may also want to create assignments that challenge students to demonstrate their own knowledge and skills without relying heavily on AI-generated content.
Connect to your goals. Assignments support the learning goals of your course, and decisions about how students may or may not use AI should be based on these goals. Designing 'in' doesn't mean 'all in'. Incorporating certain uses of AI into an assignment doesn't mean you have to allow all uses, especially those that would interfere ...
Exercise 1: Improve an assignment. Brainstorm in your breakout group choose one or more way to improve the assignment: Identify the hidden skills or knowledge explicit by creating learning outcomes or objectives. Devise an activity that gives students practice with required skills. Clarify the instructions.
Course and Assignment (Re-)Design, University of Michigan, Information and Technology Services; ChatGPT Assignments to Use in Your Classroom Today, University of Central Florida; Works Cited. Allen, D., and Tanner, K. (2006). Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners.
Generative AI Assignments. There are both academic and practical reasons you may choose to incorporate generative AI assignments into your course. For example, you may believe that AI will be a skill needed in the students' future careers in your field. Perhaps you see AI as a tool to help students deepen their understanding of and engagement ...
Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. It is most useful to tackle ill-defined or unknown problems and involves five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.
AI in Assignment Design. Using generative artificial intelligence (AI) can be both productive and limiting—it can help students to create and revise content, yet it also has the potential to undermine the process by which students create. When incorporated effectively into assignments, generative AI can be leveraged to stimulate students ...
To help you support such creative assignments in your classroom, this section details three strategies to support creative assignments and creative thinking. Firstly, re-consider the design of your assignments to optimize students' creative output. Secondly, scaffold creative assignments using low-stakes classroom activities that build ...
Design assignments that are interesting and challenging. ... technology, diet, family structure), the instructor gets students to exercise their imaginations while also accomplishing the learning objectives of the course (Walvoord & Anderson, 1989, p. 25). Double-check alignment.
Follow the principles of Transparent Assignment Design. This approach reflects an explicit attempt to create more equity across students with different levels of academic experience by making assignment goals and expectations very clear, enabling all students to learn more and produce their very best work. Research shows (Wilkelmes, 2019) that ...
Welcome to the only Design and Technology AND Engineering website you will need. Hundreds of pages cover most aspects of Design and Technology AND Engineering, whether you are a pupil or a teacher. This includes, the design process, gear systems, electronics, cams, printed circuit boards, PIC microcontrollers / computer control, key words ...
Assignments are a major part of pedagogy. Designing assignments can therefore be one of the most influential elements of classroom teaching. Thoughtful assignment design can support student learning by helping students practice meaningful tasks that carry on into their careers or across the curriculum.. The graphic below illustrates how assessment can provide a continuous process of planning ...
Exercise 1: Improve one of the assignments by. Making some of the hidden skills or knowledge explicit by creating learning outcomes or objectives. Devising an activity that gives students practice with required skills. Clarifying the instructions. Directing students to university resources where they can get help.
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Use the drop-down menus to put the stages of technological design in chronological order. Implement a solution. Identify a problem or need. Evaluate the solution. Design a solution., Use the drop-down menus to indicate the stage of technological design in which each action would occur. Establish criteria and prepare the initial ...
This week we will start by exploring an early learning theory: behaviorism, classical conditioning and response to stimuli -- including positive or negative consequences. Week 3: Learning Theory: Constructivism. Week 3 reviews a widely used and discussed learning theory, constructivism.
Assignment Design Checklist. Use this very simple checklist to assess your assignment design. Purpose: What is the assignment asking students to do? Does what the assignment asks match the author's purposes (given the nature of the class, etc.)? Is there a discernible central question or task? Clarity:
A Day in the Life. Students will create a daily newspaper edition to learn about the politics and culture of ancient Rome. Creative Educator lesson plans for using technology to engage middle school students in the curriculum while building creativity, communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving.
The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres. The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).Date and Time of Exams:25 September 2022Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon ...
GCSE Design & Technology. Our extensive collection of resources is the perfect tool for students aiming to ace their exams and for teachers seeking reliable resources to support their students' learning journey. Here, you'll find an array of revision notes, topic questions, fully explained model answers, past exam papers and more, meticulously ...
1. Make the technology locally available to even the most remote areas. 2. Local community involved in the each and every operation of the solution. 3. Local involvement of students in promoting the product. 4. Understand local needs to solve a non-local problem. W2A2Q5-MCQ: How did students pay only Rs.120 for the Solar Lamps, where the actual ...
The nursing workforce comprises multiple generations, each with unique values, beliefs, and expectations that can influence communication, work ethic, and professional relationships. In Qatar, the generational gap between nurses and nurse managers poses challenges to effective communication and teamwork, impacting job satisfaction and patient outcomes.