Still others are using generative AI for role-playing. In recent months, several readers have written in to describe how this works in their courses. Here are a couple of examples.
Brent A. Anders, a lecturer and researcher at the American University of Armenia, incorporated role-playing with AI into his course on professional communication.
“One of the major assignments that we have in our class is to find a real professional within the field that they are majoring in and interview them,” he wrote. “They have to contact this person who they do not know and conduct an interview with them in person. We go over safety and proper protocols and practice how to conduct a good interview. Yet many students in the past have still had some anxiety about interviewing someone new for the first time. I now have students go through a simulation with the AI. Through this simulation they get to practice interviewing the AI and gain usable feedback to help them better prepare for the main ‘real-world’ assignment.”
Anders first tried this in the spring of 2024 and said his students enjoyed the experience. “One student told me that they were very nervous and actually went through the simulation five times to get better and better and to help reduce her anxiety. My students expressed that the AI simulation really did help them prepare for the real-world interview assignment. This is powerful in that it shows how AI can be used in the transfer of usable skills.”
Anders, who researches AI in education,gives students a presentation on AI literacy before they interact with the tools so they know how to use them “properly and effectively.” He also provides an example prompt so they understand how to get the chatbot to assume the role of the professional and structure its responses to be clear and natural. He tells them to ask the chatbot to provide feedback at the end of the conversation and explain how they might improve.
“This semester I am excited to have them not only use an AI as a simulator via text chat, but I will have them use the voice function,” Anders wrote. “Using voice interaction with the AI will make the simulation much more engaging with even greater emotional connection. The added realism should also help them prepare even more for the real-life assignment.”
Peggy Holzweiss, a professor in the department of educational leadership at Sam Houston State University, added an AI role-play assignment this semester in a master’s course on supervision in higher education.
“Students will use AI to practice critical conversations between a supervisor (the student) and 3 different employees who are exhibiting problematic behaviors (AI),” she wrote. “After each critical conversation, the students will request feedback from AI regarding what they did well and what they could improve. When all conversations have concluded, students will write a reflection about their personal skills in critical conversations and the use of AI to practice these skills.”
Holzweiss said the prompts were created and tested on two different generative-AI platforms, and students are doing the role-playing this week. “The goal,” she notes, “is to introduce AI tools to students and how it can benefit their professional lives.”
Have you found a creative way for your students to experiment with AI as a study aid, whether through role-playing or some other means? If so, write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com, and your story may appear in a future newsletter.
Learning, friction, and fun
A central challenge instructors face in reckoning with AI is ensuring that students aren’t simply outsourcing the hard work of learning to a chatbot. A couple of recent essays by faculty members reflect on this tension, examining the roles that friction and fun play in learning.
In a Chronicle advice piece, “Make AI Part of the Assignment,” Marc Watkins, assistant director of academic innovation at the University of Mississippi, notes that when you allow students to use AI, but ask them to describe and assess the process, this adds a layer of intentional friction, which is necessary for true learning. It can also help professors avoid the time-consuming and unpleasant work of policing, he says.
“Giving students the opportunity to think critically and openly about their AI usage lays bare some uncomfortable truths for both students and teachers,” Watkins writes. “It can lead both parties to question their assumptions and be surprised by what they find. Faculty members may discover that students actually learned something using AI; conversely, students might realize that their use of these tools meant they didn’t learn much of anything at all. At the very least, asking students to disclose how they used AI on an assignment means you, as their instructor, will spend less time staring into tea leaves trying to discern if they did.”
Watkins links to an AI-assisted learning template that he uses so students can show how they did or didn’t use AI in the process of generating ideas, doing research, writing and editing.
“Our students aren’t mere content creators, and asking them to reflect on their usage of AI can help guide them to become more self-aware learners and writers,” he writes. “This approach may be key in establishing the badly needed AI literacy that your students will need in years ahead, while also preserving the irreplaceable value of human-centered education.”
In a recent post on his Substack, the Absent-Minded Professor, Josh Brake, an assistant professor of engineering at Harvey Mudd College, asks “Is Learning Fun?”
“As we think about how to engage AI, we’ve got to be conscious of this obsession with speed and efficiency,” Brake writes. “It’s not surprising that AI’s ability to make you more ‘productive’ is one of its key value propositions.” Contrast the ease of AI use to act of true learning, Brake writes, and it’s no wonder why there’s an inherent conflict there. “Learning, it turns out, rarely feels productive, instantaneous, or easy. Instead, authentic and meaningful learning often feels like a struggle, frequently filled with wrong turns, dead ends, and obstacles.”
But, Brake notes, that doesn’t mean learning can’t be fun. It’s just not the kind of immediate fun that people experience when they are, say, playing a game or watching a movie. Instead, it’s akin to the feeling you get from a workout. Perhaps you don’t enjoy it as you’re doing it, but you appreciate the benefits afterward.
Setting students’ expectations about learning is key, Brake notes. He’s asking his students to write weekly reflections on what they’re learning, so they can see their own growth over time. “As educators, we need to help our students develop realistic expectations about the work they are engaging in and how the process will feel,” he writes. “They may intuitively understand that learning is hard, but we should make this explicit.”
Do you talk to students about the process of learning? If so, how do you describe the friction they may feel and the delayed gratification that is often a central part of the process? If you’ve found something that seems to work, write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com, and your story may appear in a future newsletter.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
— Beth
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