Teaching AI Literacy (DHSI 2026)

Description

Generative AI has disrupted higher ed, and many instructors feel caught between over-hyped potential and the realities of the classroom. Faculty everywhere are trying to figure out how to re-imagine their assignments, assessments, courses, and even degree programs. In this course, we’ll explore some of the ways that we can adapt to the changing landscape of higher ed. The approach takes “critical AI literacy” as the focus (with Goodlad, Raley, and others as exemplars). Participants will engage with five short units (supported by scholarly articles, podcasts, whitepapers, blogs, etc). In the tradition of DHSI, the course will move theory into practice every day, shifting from presentation and discussion to hands-on activities, always keeping pedagogy in mind, including: student engagement, academic integrity, mitigating cognitive offloading, and enhancing critical thinking. Content supports a technoskeptical approach to generative AI, and will hold space for faculty who don’t want to assign AI apps.

This course will be optimal for university instructors who want to adapt their pedagogical approaches for AI-impacted classrooms; and for librarians who want to learn about emerging AI literacies and AI-responsive instructional practices to share with instructors and students.

Instructor(s)

D.J. Hopkins is a Professor at San Diego State University, where he is a Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. Hopkins is a scholar whose research interests include Shakespeare in Performance (including adaptations for film, theatre, and VR) and an academic administrator who has held leadership positions on campus and in the field. His monograph Sleep No More and the Discourses of Shakespeare Performance (Feb. 2024) is available from Cambridge University Press. In 2016, his co-edited Performance and the City collections (Palgrave 2009, 2012) received the Award for Excellence in Editing from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE).