Creative Explorations
Creative explorations play around the edges of text generation technologies, asking students to consider the technical, ethical, and creative opportunities as well as limitations of using these technologies to create art and literature.
- Developing Historical Insight and Critical AI Literacy Through AI-Enabled Interviews
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J. Drew Stephen
University of Texas at San AntonioIn this assignment, students in a lower-division Music and Film course enrich their understanding of historical practices and gain critical AI literacy by conducting an AI-simulated interview with a film composer who was active during the Golden Age of film in the 1930s and 40s. Students select and research a composer to gain biographical and contextual knowledge, design five interview questions, and engage with a generative AI assistant that has been prompted to assume a historically accurate role of the composer. Students gain critical AI literacy by evaluating the responses for bias and accuracy and by reflecting on the pedagogical and ethical benefits or drawbacks of the learning activity. I taught the assignment in the 2025 spring and summer semesters.
- Monster Mindscapes
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Nikki Christensen
Utah State UniversityIn first year composition courses students often struggle learning how to represent two or more texts in their own writing, otherwise known as synthesis. This assignment seeks to provide a visual example of what synthesis looks like by using AI art generators and student drawn illustrations of monsters. Using AI to merge features from each of the student drawn images, students can see first hand how to synthesize.
- "Told Rather Than Seen": Comparatively Analyzing Human-Written and AI-Generated Screenplays
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Ruth Li
Alfaisal UniversityThis assignment engages students in comparatively analyzing human-written and AI-generated texts including screenplays. I incorporated this strategy while teaching an inaugural upper-level English course on communication in the age of artificial intelligence and digital media (in spring 2024 and spring 2025). By attending closely to human-written and AI-generated texts, students investigate the extent to which AI-generated texts can capture the substance and style of the original texts. More broadly, the exercise encourages students to critically interrogate the extent to which AI outputs could be construed as creative.