Welcome to AI in Academia: Practical Strategies for Using AI to Enhance Learning
- Allen Karsina
- Jan 19
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 3
This is the fifth in a series of blog posts written by the Artificial Intelligence Faculty Learning Community Group (AI FLC) at Regis College. Although the posts are primarily intended for the Regis community, all are welcome!
Hello everyone, and welcome to our new blog, "AI in Academia." This space is designed to introduce you to the world of artificial intelligence and its practical uses in learning, teaching, research, and academic administration. We understand that AI can feel like a buzzword or something reserved for tech experts, but we’re here to make it approachable, relevant, and easy to integrate into your work and your studies.
"AI in academia" is a daunting topic, and it is easy to get overwhelmed by the vast array of applications, the potential uses and misuses of each application, and the implications all of this has for teaching and learning. As daunting as the topic can be, however, it is also one we must address. AI is here and it is not going anywhere. In our blog posts, rather than attempting to address the topic "at large", we will take one facet of AI and focus on it.
In our introductory posts, we examined several topics in AI and Education, ranging from defining some common terms to offering guidelines for integrating AI into the classroom. In this post, we will focus on demonstrating how a simple prompt can be used to help facilitate learning. Each Monday we will publish a post that contains the following:
A simple prompt you can try out with AI tools like ChatGPT.
Practical applications of the prompt for various academic tasks.
A Video demonstration showing how the prompt works and the kind of results you can expect.
Our goal is to keep it straightforward, useful, and tailored to your needs as educators.
Periodically we will also publish posts that delve into other aspects of AI, including a closer look at specific applications, reviews of research into AI, ethical considerations, best practices, and more.
Check out this "Deep Dive" into AI in Academia
What’s a Prompt, and How Can It Help You?
A prompt is simply a question, instruction, or statement that you type into an AI tool to get a specific response. Prompts can be as simple or complex as you like, and they serve as the starting point for your interaction with AI. With the right prompt, you can generate a lesson plan, receive feedback on a syllabus, brainstorm new ways to present and explore complex material, and even find inspiration for assignments. Think of prompts as guiding AI to act like a helpful assistant—one that’s just a few words away. As a student, prompts can help you interact with your education material in new ways, such as breaking down difficult concepts, providing real life examples, quizzing you on the material, and much more.
Guidelines for Using AI
AI is a tool, and like all tools it can be used effectively but can also be misused. And, to make matters more complex, AI is changing all the time and being used in innovative ways. Providing guidelines for each and every application of AI is beyond the scope of this post, but we can provide a few simple guidelines for teachers and students.
Professors
Make sure you know the guidelines and policies for using AI at your institution and follow them.
Make sure the guidelines and policies for using AI in your classes are clear to your students. Include them in the syllabus and review them in class.
Be prepared to mentor and guide your students on effective ways to use AI to enhance their learning. This includes what to “do” and what to “do not” with AI.
Include rationales for why students should not use AI in some cases, or use it in specific ways in other cases. Make sure these rationales resonate with your students.
Insist on and model transparency. When you use AI, let your students know what you did and cite the use of AI the way you would want your students to cite their use of AI.
Rethink assignments. However, rather than focusing only on “AI-proofing” assignments, also think of ways AI may be incorporated into assignments to enhance learning.
Students
Make sure you know the guidelines and policies for using AI at your institution and follow them.
Make sure you know the guidelines and expectations for using AI in your class. In many institutions, professors will have a good deal of flexibility in how AI is integrated into their classes. One professor may encourage AI to be used in developing a specific assignment, but this does not mean the same professor will want AI used the same way in a different assignment, or that a professor in another course will want AI used in the same way. If your professor doesn’t make it clear how AI should or should not be used in your class, ask them. If a specific application isn’t specifically allowed, don’t use it.
Use AI to enhance your learning, not to replace it. AI can write your paper for you. It can answer your study guide questions. These uses are misusing AI as you aren’t learning anything. Using AI to break down difficult concepts, to quiz you, to provide real life examples, to expand on a topic, and so on are all examples of using AI to enhance your learning. When using AI, ask yourself if you are learning. If the answer is no, or not very much, then AI is not helping you.
Be transparent on your use of AI and make sure you know and follow the citation guidelines from your professor.
See our blog post on recommendations for integrating AI into the classroom for more specific recommendations.
Try This Prompt: “Explain [Your Topic] to a First-Year Student”
Let’s dive in with an easy, hands-on example. Here’s a prompt designed to help you simplify complex concepts for introductory-level courses. Imagine you’re teaching a first-year student who is encountering a topic for the first time.
Prompt: “Explain [Your Topic] to a first-year student.”
Example: If you’re teaching psychology, you might type: “Explain classical conditioning to a first-year student.”
In response, the AI will provide a brief, beginner-friendly explanation, free from heavy jargon. You can refine it further by asking follow-up questions like, "Can you include a real-life example?" or "Could you make it sound more engaging?"
See It in Action
To make this even easier, we’ve included a short video demonstration. In the video, we use this prompt to generate a simple explanation of a sample topic. You’ll see how to input the prompt and explore ways to refine or expand the response based on your teaching goals.
What to Expect in Future Posts
Each week, we’ll introduce a new prompt or feature, with practical examples geared specifically toward educators. Upcoming topics include:
Generating discussion questions for various subjects.
Creating summaries and outlines for long readings.
Getting suggestions for classroom activities and engagement strategies.
We’re excited to explore these AI applications with you and provide resources that simplify tasks, spark new ideas, and add value to your teaching.
What Do YOU Think?
We’ve designed this blog around getting started with using AI in your classroom, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do other things! We’d love to hear from you on what you’d like us to cover. This can include different prompts to explore, but also much, much more. Maybe you’d like to us to showcase a specific use of AI in the classroom, or discuss how to get the most out of a specific AI application like Grammarly, or discuss best practices for citations. Or maybe you'd like to add your own contribution or even author your own blog post. If you have thoughts and ideas, please let us know in the chat below.
Stay tuned, and let’s make AI a useful part of your academic toolkit!
News and Announcements
Interested in learning more about AI?
Regis faculty are encouraged to self-enroll in the "Using AI in your Teaching" course created by Dr. Diana Perdue. Faculty can access the course here (don't forget to click the "enroll me" button).
Interested in contributing a post or joining our Regis College Artificial Intelligence Faculty Learning Community?
Contact Allen Karsina at allen.karsina@regiscollege.ed
Acknowledgements
ChatGPT 4o was used to generate a template for this blog post. Specifically, we used the prompt “write an introductory blog post for a blog introducing AI to professors at a small college. The blog will feature a simple prompt that professors can use and will show the prompt being used with a video.”
The Welcome, What’s a Prompt, Try This Prompt, See It in Action, and What to Expect in Future Posts sections are primarily AI-generated with editing by the author. The Guidelines for Using AI, AI Training, What Do YOU Think, and Acknowledgements sections were written by the author, and the video was filmed by the author.
The image was generated using a GPT (AI Art Assistant) created by the first author. The author uploaded a draft of the blog and asked the GPT to "write a pop art prompt to create an image based on the blog post attached".
The audio was generated using NotebookLM by uploading a draft of the blog and using the "audio overview" function.
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