Is AI Outsmarting Your Pedagogy? 5 Assignments for the AI Era

As a theology professor, summers often allow me to shift my focus away from my classes. Not this summer. Like many educators, I’ve known in the back of my mind I need to consider making changes in my assignments because of one thing: AI. If you are in a similar spot, keep reading. I argued early on in the AI education revolution that AI could help not only educators, but theologians too. While it is right to attend to the important concerns of originality and plagiarism, theological educators must also address a more productive issue: Do our assignments actually assess what is important? Put more bluntly: AI exposed our overreliance on writing papers as the default proof of learning. For many of us, it is difficult to imagine a theology class that is not heavily reliant on papers. But we must. More importantly, we should. Theology will be better for it. The church will be better for it. Our current dilemma is a blessing in disguise. Table of contents Shift from product to performance 5 types of assignments AI can’t do for students 1. Memory 2. Dialogue 3. Interpretation 4. Discernment 5. Embodiment AI may make us better teachers Shift from product to performance A paper can be a pr...