Faculty members at Northeast Community College are beginning to integrate artificial intelligence tools into their classrooms to prepare students for the workplace. This initiative involves training for faculty to enhance learning and efficiency, amidst ongoing debates about AI's appropriate use in education. Similar to past technological shifts, the college emphasizes responsible integration to equip students with essential modern workforce skills.
Preparing students
Trevor Bailey, an information technology faculty member, integrates AI as a learning enhancement tool in his programming courses, aiming to deepen understanding rather than replace foundational learning. Students utilize AI for tasks like regular expression (regex) support to build and test advanced patterns for real-world validation, and for CSS styling to generate boilerplate code, allowing them to focus on functionality. AI also helps generate realistic seed data for databases and assists in complex SQL queries and code refactoring, with a strict requirement for documentation and explanation. Bailey emphasizes treating AI as a learning and exploration tool, a concept coach for challenging topics, and not a shortcut, ensuring students understand its use and prepare for modern software development environments ethically.
Low-pressure language practice
In the humanities, Spanish instructor Wendy Swenson uses AI to create grammar and vocabulary practice exercises tailored to current classroom lessons, saving time on activity creation. Each student receives a unique version of the exercises, enabling personalized practice and instant feedback, which includes opportunities for follow-up questions and additional examples. This approach allows students to learn at their own pace, while Swenson can monitor their AI interactions to assess understanding and adjust her teaching. Additionally, AI provides a low-pressure environment for students to practice conversational Spanish, helping them build confidence before engaging in real-world communication.
Teaching students how to direct AI
In business communications, AI is used to teach students the critical skill of prompt writing. A key assignment involves students using AI to compose a professional email for a realistic scenario, with the emphasis on their ability to clearly and intentionally direct the AI, rather than simply accepting its output. Students learn a structured framework for crafting effective prompts, defining elements like role, audience, purpose, tone, structure, and constraints. They are required to plan their prompts before using AI, generate an email, and then revise their prompts to improve clarity and professionalism, ensuring they remain the decision-makers and produce communication that is clear, purposeful, and professionally appropriate.
A partner to improve instruction
Faculty members are also leveraging AI behind the scenes to enhance their instructional design and create more effective learning environments. For an international business course, AI was instrumental in developing a complex global grocery store expansion project, which challenges students to analyze market adaptations for a new country. Previously, an assignment of this scope would have demanded weeks of planning and multiple semesters to refine. However, by using AI as a design partner, the instructor was able to rapidly move from concept to a classroom-ready activity within a single work session, significantly reducing development time and allowing for a greater focus on quality, learning outcomes, and student engagement.
