Teaching with AI: An in-class activity with students’ policy memos
Published: Nov 10, 2025
Contributor: James Quirk
License: CC BY NC SA 4.0 license – Allows revisions and additions but forbids commercial use.
Students want to use AI tools effectively, efficiently, and ethically, but often don’t know how. After students submitted their policy memos, we used generative AI in class to assess the memos from the perspectives of a legislative director, a local CEO, an NGO, and an academic researcher. We had a classroom discussion on the usefulness of that feedback and later students submitted a short reflection paper on the activity and what they learned. Overall, students developed a greater sense that genAI can be very useful but recognized it is a tool, not an answer.