In-Class GenAI Activities Justin Hodgson | Indiana University

Introduction to GenAI (through digital making)

Activity 1 | Design Concepts & the Counter-Poster

YOUR TASK

Working in pairs, make use of the principles of design discussed in today’s reading to recreate one movie poster: either for Barbie or Oppenheimer.

THE CATCH

You must strategically manipulate the poster’s elements/assets (examples provided) to appeal to the audience of the “opposite” film.

READY TO USE (and Generative AI) ASSETS

Here is a link to a Google Drive folder with ready-to-use assets which may help speed up the activity.

Also, as you are creating these image composites in Adobe Express, be sure to take advantage of the platform's features. Two in particular that seem likely to be very useful:

• Remove background
• Generative text-to-image

REPORT OUT/SHARE/DISCUSSION

Be prepared to discuss your creation with your tables and to share out with the entire class. Think about what you created, what design principles you employed, and how your creation offers as a counter-narrative / counter-position.

The purpose of this activity was to get students to not only think about the design principles they read about in assigned course reading, but to get them to start to understand those principles in action: i.e., to apply them, in some meaningful (and fun) way. Additionally, the goal was to help them further develop digital creativity and digital literacy skills with image creation (specifically using Adobe Express)

Activity 2 | Introduction to GenAI

YOUR TASK

Working in pairs (same pairs as Activity 1), use CLAUDE.AI or CHATGPT to create a short (300-500 word) essay about the "counter-poster" you made for Activity 1. These essays need to help readers understand the new film (and its new genre) as your counter-poster represents it. They also need to offer some meaningful commentary on the film/counter-poster and its relation to X, where X is one of the following topics: politics, culture, gender, race, economy, class, or power.

THE CATCH(ES):

1. Must be submitted as a published/shareable Adobe Express Webpage
2. You need to read, edit, revise, and rewrite the text created by Claude/ChatGPT as necessary to make it more authentically fit your voice and the spirit of this assignment.
3. You must include the Counter-Poster created in Activity 1
4. Be sure to include the “prompt” in quotes at the bottom of your Express page .

REPORT OUT/SHARE/DISCUSSION

Be prepared to discuss what you created with your group and to share insights from you process/experience with the class:

• What did you learn about GenAI?
• What prompt did you use and did it work? Did you have to try more than one prompt? Why?
• Given the text it created, what did you modify/edit/change? Why did you make those alterations?

The purpose of this activity was to offer students a low-stakes introduction to Generative AI technologies, to let them play with the tools in strategic ways, and to get them to start from the perspective that whatever "the machine" produces should be read carefully, edited, revised, and/or generally modified. The second goal was to introduce students to creating scrolling digital webpages using Adobe Express, as they will need to create at least one assignment element this semester using Adobe Express webpage. This activity is part the scaffolding of activities, engagements, and assignments at the center of the course (from key learning experiences to core learning outcomes).

GenAI & Getting Started | One Pre-Start Approach

ACTIVITY 3 | GenAI as Pre-Start Starting Point

For the next major assignment (A2), we are moving into Digital Storytelling (through video or audio). Your challenge in this assignment will be to create a video project or audio/podcast that offers a compelling story and/or meaningful engagement. But what does it mean to offer a compelling story and how might we get started? We will explore these possibilities as a class in two parts or steps today: figuring out what is or what makes for a compelling story and identifying a set of considerations or possibilities for your specific A2 projects.

TASK 1 – Working in your table subgroups (pairs or groups of 3), see what you can learn about a compelling story (i.e., what makes a compelling story) from Claude.ai or ChatGPT? (Try to go beyond a single prompt or question engagement.)

• Be prepared to report out to your table and/or to share what you have learned about what makes a compelling story with the class

TASK 2 - Work with Claude.ai or ChatGPT to see if you can come up with some compelling strategies for your specific project? Think about the kinds of questions or prompts you might need to create to start on the path or more situational or context-specific ideas and considerations.

Discuss your prompts and the kinds of ideas GenAi offered for approaching/exploring your project.

• Are there commonalities among each of your searches?
• Given your specific focuses for this assignment, are there ideas that seem more promising than others? Why so?

Be prepared to share with the class.

The purpose of this activity was to get students to think about rhetorical invention in conjunction with an on-demand collaborator. To show how the technology can help offer them more general ideas and guides for thinking about the genre, project, or assignment, and then to start to more meaningfully offer context-specific or situational possibilities. The idea is to help students more readily identify potential starting points, to critically consider why some approaches may be better suited to their topic, and get them more quickly heading in a productive direction.