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POLS 100: Research Methods

Surveys, Experiments, Data Analysis

Reflection on Instructional Change:

I used the Empowering Students to use AI Responsibly to Support Learning and Writing Effective Prompts to redesign two assignments in my POLS 100 Research Methods course (we meet in a computer lab). I redesigned an experimental assignment (individual work) and a survey assignment (group project)--in the past students struggled with coming up with treatment and controls for a hypothetical experiment, and with creating survey questions for our class survey.

For the first assignment the students worked alone to use GenAI to help them create treatment and controls for a hypothetical lab or field experiment based on their selected: research question, independent, and dependent variables. The assignment worksheet provided prompts to get the students started and also to help them refine their results. Once they had a working set of treatments and controls they experimented with expanding the number of treatments, creating pre- and post-test questions, and creating explanatory text when needed. When using GenAI the students seemed much more engaged, spent time refining and iterating with slightly different dependent variables/independent variables. They then had time to peer review each others experiments, discuss issues with validity of their measures, and switch easily from lab experiments to field experiments. They could also quickly ask about potential ethical issues, sample size, and how much the experiments would cost to run.

Based on my experience using GenAI in a previous course, one of the areas I spent the most time on for the redesign was making sure students had good examples for prompts at each stage of the experimental design-this facilitated their use of the tool(s) for the assignment and helped them to understand more generally how to use GenAI.

ACUE Gen AI Course Activities:
- Empowering Students Using AI: Discussion and Reflection
- Writing Effective Prompts: Discussion and Reflection

At the "Observe and Analyze Session" with my group, we discussed how GenAI can be used to create simple content that our students can then analyze, review, amend, and build off of-some course activities or lessons are not so much about the creation of the simple content but rather about the analyzing, reviewing, and more complicated expansion of our ideas.

Evidence of Instructional Change

evidence of instructional change
Screenshot of a portion of the assignment, showing how to refine prompts to modify output.	Screenshot showing a students completed worksheet after using the previous prompts.	ACUE Badge.

Practice and Reflect Teaching and Learning with AI:

I think the most important think I picked up from this ACUE course was to assist students with the initial prompts to get them started using GenAI. Most students had little to no experience and their initial prompts didn't return output they could work with or even modify-too simple, or not what they wanted. It was helpful to have the experiments assignment first and then later when they worked in groups to create their surveys they felt more experienced with the tool and were able to more efficiently use GenAI AND modify their output.

Course Syllabus

POLS 100 Syllabus from Canvas.docx

Faculty Bio

faculty bio
	Kristina Flores Victor: Kristina Flores Victor is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at California State University, Sacramento. She received her PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Davis. Her work focuses on American Politics, California Politics, Immigration, and Latinx Politics. Recent projects include changing perceptions of discrimination within Latinx communities, how voters use ethnic and policy cues to make decisions, how race and ethnicity impact support for redistributive social programs, and English Language Learners experiences in higher education. Dr. Flores Victor is the graduate coordinator for the Political Science program and is an advisor for the Odyssey Mentoring Program. She is a first-generation scholar and former alumna of California State University, Sacramento.

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.