Questions to spark student discussion of AI

What if we invited our students to talk about AI without steering them in a particular direction? Last semester, I felt a palpable sense of relief and excitement in the room at an open forum that drew teachers and students where I work at College of Marin. Shelly Jarenski writes, “Having these conversations with students while we are still learning about what gen AI will be and do can help ease our students’ and our own anxieties and help make us all a part of this future rather than observers of it.”

The other day, Michelle Pacansky-Brock asked me if I knew of a list of questions to ask students about AI, not for the purpose of collecting survey data but for the purpose of sparking classroom discussions. I loved this idea. It fits the philosophy that open educational practices are a good way to approach AI in education, an idea I explored with Maha Bali and Lance Eaton, PhD in “How do we respond to generative AI in education? Open educational practices give us a framework for an ongoing process” for the Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching .

Here's what I've found so far. An Internet search turned up Shelly Jarensky at the University of Michigan Dearborn's approach to AI discussions. She makes it a point to share her own attitudes and values (which she summarizes as “I care; I’m open-minded; and I trust you”) before asking students anything. Her discussion prompt focuses on these questions: “What do you think of AI? How do you feel about it? How are you using it? What uses do you think of as cheating and what uses do you not think of as cheating? What ethical concerns do you see with this new technology?“ I also found that ESLVault.com has a pretty nice list of 25 artificial intelligence conversation questions.

Then I asked around on the AI in Ed listserv, the Facebook group Higher ed discussions of AI writing & use, here, BlueSky, and X, and was delighted to get the responses below:

• Maha Bali of the American University in Cairo shared questions she commonly uses such as asking what metaphor students like to use for AI (Luke Fernandez suggested this too). Sometimes she introduces her own cake metaphor and invites discussion. I love that she asks what AI is good and bad at but also asks what students are unsure about with regard to AI’s capacities and what AI should NOT be used for. Maha also shared a set of survey questions from a research project with Hoda Mostafa that would work well for sparking discussion. Another idea she mentioned was giving students examples of speculative fiction about AI to spark discussion or inviting students to try out a particular use of a tool before discussing how it went. I liked her idea of giving students a document like OpenAI's Student Guide to Writing with AI and asking them what they agreed with in it and what they didn’t. I might do that with the Student Guide to AI Literacy from the MLA/CCCC Task Force on Writing and AI. I’m hoping Maha will write more about these ideas on her blog soon!
• Chris Ostro shared this list of questions on the AI in Ed listserv and gave permission for me to share it publicly. The list was developed for a student panel on AI presented by the Learning Design Group at the University of Colorado Boulder. (the panel is recorded).
• Annette Vee of the University of Pittsburgh shared survey questions asked of students that sparked campus discussions.
• Jon Ippolito of the University of Maine shared this fun questionnaire listed on LearnwithAI.org and put together by Slack that purports to tell you which is yours out of 5 styles of interacting with AI.
• Joel Gladd added these questions: Do you think AI models have worldviews? Should AI have a worldview? What basic beliefs should it have?
• Matt Coss shared a blog post about class activities to spark discussion and social annotation via Perusall. Sample questions include "How would you feel about a professor using only AI to give feedback on something you produced for class? Homework? A project / essay? A final exam? Now, how would you feel as a teacher if a student used AI for any of those things?"
• Laurie Bridges shared that she has used the Trustworthy AI Cards, each of which has at least one question. Co-creator Merve Hickok describes them as "each representing fundamental concepts for Data, AI, GenAI, Governance and Society/. The idea is to gamify the learning and take out the intimidation from technical jargon."
• Dalton Flanagan shared the AI C.A.R.E. virtual card deck of questions. Their goal is to encourage educators and students to embrace AI in education.

Please comment with any other AI question lists you think would be exciting for students to engage with!