POLS 150 American Governments

- - - Engagement • Student Empowerment • AI Tool

Reflection on Instructional Change:

I choose to focus on using AI-Inclusive Tools and decided to incorporate the use of ChatGPT as part of student empowerment to use AI tools. I decided to deploy this by constructing a midterm essay question that instructs students to ask AI to use the persona of two historical founding fathers (Hamilton and Mason) and engage in Q&A regarding their thoughts on the Electoral College. The second part of the question asked the students to incorporate their discussion with the "persona" in their responses regarding the relevance of the Electoral College.

The impact on my teaching strategy is a deeper exploration on the use of AI without compromising student’s learning process while maintaining academic honesty. This involves a careful composition of the question, placement of the question in the exam, as well as implementation of anti-cheating software. The impact on student responses to the question based on student essays are more focused responses on major points as well as richer supporting information.

The section on teaching with AI – Inclusive and AI – Resistance Learning Experiences truly allowed me to be more accepting about the possibilities on the use of AI Tools as part of my teaching tool.

During my "Observe and Analyze Session", I found that more educators are using AI as part of course preparation and course assessment. While I was focused on trying to incorporate AI into my course, I was glad of the reminder from one of the presentations discussing the impact of "hallucinations" that Gen AI creates in actual student research.

Evidence of Instructional Change


This is a screenshot of the introductory video where instructions for the midterm exam where AI tool was deployed in one of the questions. Actual question is not posted.	Student Sample Response 1 Student Sample Response 2	Completed ACUE Badge for Writing Effective AI Prompts

Practice and Reflect Teaching and Learning with AI:

The modules included the course provided an opportunity to explore the possibilities of using AI in improving course preparation, course content, and student engagement. The use of AI to improve the deployment of course content can definitely improve student engagement especially in allowing students to explore the "personas" of historical figures when completing reading assignments like the Federalists Papers. It is still very important that students read documents and published materials to be able to identify the "hallucinations" that is AI generated . The responsibility lies both with the faculty member (course preparation) and the student (completion of coursework).

Faculty Bio


	Janice Shiu is a Lecturer for the Department of Political Science at Sac State. She holds a PhD in Political Science with an emphasis on Public Policy and Comparative Politics and an MA in Applied Women’s Studies. SShe is a former legislative analyst, development worker, and loves to travel.

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.