Chatting About Chatbots in the Classroom: Prompting Responses to a New Tool

Abstract

Faculty from three disciplines decided to embrace AI and create assignments that allowed students to investigate the capabilities of AI in Spanish, science, and communication courses. The intent: provide students with a critical thinking assignment across the liberal arts disciplines that will allow them to determine the worth of Artificial Intelligence in their courses and careers. Each of us created assignments specific to our disciplines that challenged students to compare AI output with their own work in hopes of pushing them to learn the value, capabilities, and ethics of using AI. We’ll discuss what we learned employing AI in our Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Summer 2025, and Fall 2025 courses and what students thought about using chatbots in these three general education disciplines. During the session, we’ll challenge participants to consider how AI could be employed in their disciplines and the impact it has on student learning and career preparation. Armed with our data and extensive research about AI in higher education, we aim to have a spirited chat about chatbots in the classroom.

Presenters

Neal Haldane
Professor, Communication, Madonna University, Michigan, United States

Elizabeth Goulette
Associate Professor, Spanish, Madonna University, Michigan, United States

Veronica Riha
Professor, Biology, Madonna University, Michigan, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Workshop Presentation

Theme

Considering Digital Pedagogies

KEYWORDS

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Chatbot, Pedagogy, General Education, Multidisciplinary, Evolving Assignments