It’s been over a year and a half since ChatGPT launched and literally disrupted our teaching and learning lives. “Disruptive Technology” is a phrase coined by Clayton M. Christensen in 1995 and often used throughout the decades to describe new, innovative technologies that change how things are done in life either socially or by businesses, industry, etc. thus challenging traditional education and necessitating a change in educational practices. Most of us know or can imagine the upset caused by the intervention of the calculator, for example.
Most will agree that generative artificial Intelligence, specifically through applications such as ChatGPT, Claude, Monica, Microsoft CoPilot, etc. has disrupted teaching and learning at all levels of education. Debates about various ways AI has been used are ongoing and sometimes a bit contentious. Some teachers and other stakeholders are concerned that AI is leading to limited learning, cheating and plagiarism, and an overall decline in quality education. While students have expressed concerns with their teachers’ use from limited and vague feedback to lack of creativity in lesson activity development.
Voices of wisdom tell us to use AI judiciously and purposefully. Use it because, like calculators and the Internet, it isn’t going anywhere. Plan for AI use, make clear decisions about why you will or will not allow AI use in a particular class assignment. There are so many things an instructor or instructional designer should consider when planning courses: aligning resources and activities to lesson objectives, which in turn, align to course goals, content and resource copyright issues, time taken to complete tasks, and issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA).
When I took my first job as an instructional designer at Texas State University, the very wise leaders of our ID group had already created a lesson plan template of sorts to use with faculty when designing courses. This was used before development ever took place.
The original template had 5 columns: Lesson or Module # and title, Lesson objectives, Read and View, Ungraded Assignments (including discussions or practice tests, or other activities not graded or minimally weighted) and Graded Assignments. Alignment was specifically captured by adding parenthetical notes behind each objective with the title of assessments in the last columns. While not visible, alignment was also discussed between lesson or module objectives, Read and View resources, and Ungraded Assignments.
Eventually, the planning matrix (as our lesson plan was called) further revised to give guidelines to faculty when adding actionable, measurable objectives (think Bloom’s), resources, and activities. It eventually added another column for “Feedback Plan” so instructors had to consider when students needed feedback and how much work they were putting on themselves with their plans in terms of grading.
Recently, I’ve wanted to further revise the PM to force the above-mentioned considerations: Namely, purposeful DEIA and AI considerations. Attached you will find that document template. Note that the original PM used by the ID department in Instructional Technology Services and later by the Office of Distance & Extended Learning under Academic Affairs at Texas State University held a Creative License, free-to-use license. This revised version does as well.