SOC 08: Sense & Nonsense in Social Research and Social Issues

Critical Thinking, Responsibility, Student Engagement

Reflection on Instructional Change:

Practice from ACUE Gen AI Course Implemented - Empowering Students to Use AI Responsibly

I created an assignment along with instructional materials for students to then complete the assignment using AI. The focus of the activity was to provide students an opportunity to use an AI tool and to create a prompt to be able to use information for a specific purpose. The "specific purpose" was to investigate the history and background of a specified social issue.

During the Spring 2024 and Summer 2024, I was redesigning my course to help enhance student engagement and update other elements of the course. I created a discussion prompt for students to make use of an AI tool to explore the history and background of a social issue. The activity was to support their ability to develop the introduction section of an outline they have to develop in the course.

I consulted with an instructional designer as well as had a former student review the activity before administering it in the course this semester. I decided to do this activity to help support students' use of an AI tool as an informational coach and to practice responsible use of AI.

Impact on Teaching and Student Learning

Students engaged and executed the steps that were outlined for them. I also saw an improvement in their incorporation of historical background information as they developed other components of an outline in the course relative to creating an argument pro or con to an issue. One student wrote the following after completing the activity:

"Some ways that I think I can use AI responsibly in my social debate groups while maintaining academic integrity. Is by treating any AI tool as just another source of information. Use AI to gather background information and different perspectives on your topic. Another way to use AI is by helping brainstorm ideas and structure your outline. If you feel stuck and you have no idea what to say or write down, AI can give you some ideas. A place to start. Also, the most important thing is to remember to cite your information if you used AI as a source of information."

FLC Activities Most Influential that Impacted My Instruction

The learning activities from the ACUE Gen AI course that impacted me the most were

Empowering Students Using AI: Discussion and Reflection
Writing Effective Prompts: Discussion and Reflection

These two modules from the ACUE Gen AI course were most impactful because it seemed that these could enhance the learning experience of students while supporting them in achieving the course objectives.

CTL "Observe and Analyze" Synchronous Session

This session was a great way to see what others are doing and collaborate on how we are developing engaging activities using the AI tool. I appreciated the feedback which confirmed my initial thoughts of how to deliver the assignment/discussion activity but had gone overboard with my directions. I plan to modify the directions for this activity when I prepare my Spring 2025 course.

Evidence of Instructional Change

Evidence of Instructional Change
Activity Created for Students to Complete During Week 7 students participated in a discussion forum. The image above is the introduction on that page. After students complete three steps that I guide them through in using AI they then post to a discussion forum responding to these prompts.	One Student's Response to the Activity First part of a student's post to the Discussion Forum 3. Student's comparison of two prompts they posed to an AI tool.	ACUE Accomplishments Badges earned through ACUE AI Training Course

Practice and Reflect Teaching and Learning with AI:

The AI ACUE course influenced my teaching practices by exploring current technology and how to maximize its use with students in the course versus being fearful of its use. Helping students experience using it for a specific purpose as well as how to do so ethically and responsibly supports the objectives of increasing students' critical thinking skills and application.

I provided students with a few choices of AI tools to use for the activity.

AI Tools

If you have not used an AI tool before, you may want to check each of these popular tools and then decide which one you want to use for this learning activity.

- ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) - ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI. It uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to answer questions, write content, summarize information, and more.

- ChatSonic - ChatSonic is an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT but with integrated Google search, image generation, and text-to-speech.

- Gemini - Gemini is Google’s AI chatbot that uses a combination of machine learning and NLP (formerly Google Bard).

- GPT-4 - GPT-4 is the latest version of OpenAI’s language model systems. It is a large multimodal model, accepting text and image inputs and emitting text outputs.

You are not restricted to one of these tools for this activity. If you use a different tool, you need to identify it in your post.

Course Syllabus

SOC 08 (Asynchronous) Course Syllabus

Faculty Bio

Faculty Biography - Debra Welkley, Lecturer in Sociology
	Dr. Debra Welkley: For the past 25 years I have taught in the Sociology Department here at Sacramento State, yet have been teaching for over 30 years in higher education. During my time at Sac State, I have consistently taught sections of our critical thinking course, SOC 08: Sense and Nonsense in Social Research and Social Issues. Additionally, I teach Social Problems, Race & Ethnic Relations, Sociology of Religion, and our peer mentoring courses, Mentoring in Sociology. My primary research interests focus on race and ethnic relations, mentoring, and online learning.

Funding
	This work was supported by: US Department of Education Hispanic Serving Institution Project TECH4Equity US Department of Education Hispanic Serving Institution Project STEM4Equity P031C210012 *Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the US Department of Education.