Want to Engage Students and Strengthen Your Teaching in the Age of AI? Start With This Simple Strategy.
If you’re updating your syllabus because of AI and wondering how to keep students engaged, this post highlights an easy-to-implement strategy that can help. Learn how rethinking your learning objectives can reduce confusion, increase student accountability, and help you create a more transparent and equity-centered classroom where students are motivated to learn without needing to overhaul your entire course.
This is the fourth post in my five-part “Systems for Teaching” series this July. New here? Here’s the link to part one, part two, and part three.
If you’ve ever seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, you know this iconic scene.
A monotone teacher (Ben Stein) stands at the front of the classroom, droning through an economics lesson:
“In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives… anyone? Anyone? …passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone?”
As he asks and answers his own questions, the camera pans across a room of students with glassy eyes.
It’s intended to be funny—a caricature, even.
However, when I recently rewatched this clip, I thought about how many of us—even the most charismatic—may come across this way to our students.
And to be clear, it’s not because we don’t care.
It’s because we’re fluent in the content of our disciplines and may forget, when preparing our lectures and assessments, that our students are still learning the basic grammar of our field.
Photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash
The Real Question Isn’t “How Do I Catch Them Using AI?” It Should Be “How Can I Help Them Understand That AI Isn’t Always Helping Them?”
Right now, as faculty revise syllabi and rethink assignments in response to AI, many of us are asking:
Is it possible to create an AI-proof assignment?
How can I motivate students to seek out information independently rather than relying on ChatGPT?
Should I incorporate AI into my classroom and if so, how?
All fair questions. But here’s another one:
What if a tool we’ve always used is actually our best bet in addressing the issue at the root of each of these questions?
I’m talking about learning objectives.
AI Is Forcing the Conversation We Should’ve Been Having All Along
As faculty, we often breeze past learning objectives. Maybe we reuse them from a previous syllabus or paste in the ones our department gave us.
But that’s a missed opportunity.
Well-crafted learning objectives do more than meet an institutional requirement. They paint a clear picture of the end goals of the learning experience we’ve designed for students.
When our learning objectives are aligned with our readings, in-class activities, and assessments, they help students understand not just what they're doing but why.
And yes, if they read them (a challenge I’ll help with—don’t worry), students can begin to:
Understand the “why” behind our teaching choices
Connect the dots across weeks of content
Recognize what kind of thinking, feeling, or practice is being assessed
And here’s the biggest win:
You’ll get fewer of those anxiety-fueled emails asking “What do I need to know for the exam?”
(I just triggered at least one of you. Sorry, not sorry. 😉)
How We Can Move Forward
Before you overhaul every assignment or policy in response to AI, try starting with these three questions:
Do my assignments provide students with practice in those areas, or just ask them to report information?
What do I actually want students to be able to do, feel, or demonstrate by the end of the course?
Have I made those expectations visible?
This is the power of learning objectives—not as jargon, but as a teaching strategy.
When we scaffold our intended destination for students, we often end up spending less time repeating “anyone? anyone?” when teaching.
In a World of AI Outputs, What Are We Assessing?
AI can already:
Summarize a reading
Write a five-paragraph essay
Draft discussion questions
But it can’t:
Apply cultural knowledge to uncover nuance in an argument
Shift a perspective after hard dialogue
Connect insights from seemingly unrelated courses to deepen understanding
If our assessments only target cognitive recall, students can easily skip the hard work and use AI to complete course assessments.
But if we also leaned into affective and psychomotor learning goals in our courses? Engagement is more likely to deepen, and transformation can happen because students can’t yet easily use AI. shortcuts. That’s why I focused on classroom discussions, engaging with students’ emotions, and building trust in the previous posts in this “Systems for Teaching” series.
This Isn’t Customer Service. It’s Teaching.
Sometimes, when I talk about becoming more transparent in our teaching with fellow academics, I feel some resistance:
“Why should I have to explain myself to a 19-year-old?”
“Isn’t this just bending to the consumer model of higher education?”
Here’s what I say in response:
Transparency isn’t coddling. It’s equity-centered teaching.
If we claim to want to hold students accountable, then we must be clear about what we expect.
Also, we can’t critique academia’s hidden curriculum and participate in it by keeping our expectations vague.
Over the years, I’ve learned that when I’m explicit about what I expect, why it matters, and how students can succeed, I build trust and develop rapport that increases engagement.
Moreover, because there’s trust between us, when students miss the mark and don’t perform as well as they would have liked, they’re more likely to take ownership.
They don’t email to argue about grades as often.
More frequently, they ask how to improve.
Even students who aren’t performing at the level they want show up more openly when the expectations are clear.
Coming Friday: A Tool to Make Transparency Easier
In Friday’s post for paid subscribers, I’ll share a “Preparing for Class” worksheet I created to help students approach readings with more clarity and intention.
I used this template for years, but then abandoned it when I realized students were using it to hunt for the “right” answers, rather than engaging deeply with the material.
So, I replaced it with something simpler and more effective at encouraging real thinking and content-driven reflection.
In Friday’s post, I’ll walk through both tools and show you how I use them now. Whether you’re trying to support struggling students or make your assignments more intentional, this post will help you do both.
Until next time,
Brielle aka Your Cooperative Colleague