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

Evidence of Instructional Change
Introductory video	Student Sample Response 1	Student Sample Response 2	ACUE Badge for Writing Effective AI Prompts
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.	After reviewing the responses on ChatGPT, and my own personal opinions and research on this topic in years past, I think we need electoral college reform. This is an issue that has happened and taken place frequently over the last 25 years. Both Trump and Bush famously lost the popular vote, but proceeded to win the presidential election based on electoral votes. I see this issue with their two wins to abolishment, as Alexander Hamilton's persona, and ideology say, the Electoral College does protect the interest of smaller states, something that still holds true to this day, now more than ever with a large amount of people having left rurality out of the national stage. Another con would be that abolishment would more than likely push smaller states with less population to feel less inclined to vote due to what would be a minimized impact without the electoral college. However concerning these cons may be I think the pros outweigh them. The Electoral College has flaws in that all of a state's electorate typically go to one candidate while not taking into account those who vote for other sides, this puts a large amount of stress accompanying to pan specifically at some states; larger states that have a larger electorate that may not mirror its population as there is no max of electorates but there is a floor that can often give states more importance than others. Therefore one pro of abolishing the electoral college would be getting rid of the imbalance in how each vote counts. In states where there are large populations but fewer electors it makes it so they cannot have the same as states with smaller populations but a decent amount of electors like Wyoming, Iowa, Arizona, etc. Therefore abolishment can help even out representation by giving voters more data per person instead of just basing off each state and feel their vote and opinion does matter. This could and has caused people to feel disheartened about voting when they do not see an impact.	Yes, you might think, why not just use popular vote, aka who has the most votes. Which is a valid point, however, doing so as Hamilton (Chat GPT) stated, "by doing so would essentially drown out smaller states and their voices and opinions, policies and needs only focus on bigger areas of America in terms of Trump v Clinton in 2016, if the popular vote was the only one needed Hillary would have won. However you would have to consider out states such as Montana, Wyoming Tennessee, and many mid west southern more rural states which while in a numbers perspective is less people than those of California Michigan and New York. However in terms of culture it is important to keep these voices heard." By keeping the electoral vote it forces campaigns to balance out more broadly and listen to the voices of every state from California to even those in Idaho. Another reason for keeping the electoral vote is to prevent larger populated states such as California, Texas, New York, or Florida from making all the rules and laws and essentially dominating the rest of the United States due to their compact amounts of people and sway. Hamilton (AI) stated that "America was never intended to be a democracy by design it was intended as a Republic that kept about a republic that can safeguard the minority and give everyone a say." On the flip side, we are a democracy; the majority should win as that's what our country was founded on. Having millions more people vote for someone yet having them lose doesn't make sense and does not support fair play or representation considering into presidential nomination. The electoral college makes every state (in theory) equal as Mason (AI) states. Having every election too short far powerful manipulate system ensure ends result what they want by removing electoral college we remove chance for this.

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 Biography
Faculty Image	About Me:
	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:	Logos
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.