Your first AI wins: 5 everyday tasks

When you finish, you can run five course-prep tasks with AI and check each.

Win 1: Outline from outcomes

Weak prompt: “Plan my course.” Strong prompt: “Here are my 5 learning outcomes for a second-year statistics course. Propose a 14-week sequence with weekly topics, one active-learning task and one low-stakes quiz topic per week. Flag weeks likely to be hardest.”

Check for: topics out of logical order, missing prerequisites and content that does not match your textbook. Treat the outline as brainstorming.

Win 2: Case studies and examples

Weak prompt: “Give me a case.” Strong prompt: “Write a fictional 300-word case about a small business deciding between two suppliers, for a first-year business ethics course. Add three discussion questions that need evidence from the readings. No real companies.”

Check for: unrealistic details, stereotypes, and factual errors. Cases should be plausible and fair to different cultures and settings.

Win 3: Practice questions

Weak prompt: “Write exam questions.” Strong prompt: “Write 10 practice questions on [topic] for [level], rising in difficulty, with an answer key and short explanations. Flag any where the answer depends on convention.”

Check for: wrong answer keys, which happen. Solve each question yourself. Use AI-drafted items as practice, and write the real exam from your own knowledge.

Win 4: Rubrics and feedback banks

Weak prompt: “Make a rubric.” Strong prompt: “Draft a 4-level analytic rubric for a 1,500-word research paper aligned with these outcomes: [outcomes]. Observable language. One page.”

Check for: criteria not tied to your outcomes, and overlapping levels. Test on a past paper with names removed that you own the right to use. Never paste a current student’s work into an unapproved tool.

Win 5: Assignment redesign

Weak prompt: “How do I stop students from using AI?” Strong prompt: “Here is my assignment and its learning goal. Suggest 5 redesigns that make student thinking visible, such as drafts with reflection, short oral check-ins or using personal data, and name one drawback for each.”

Check for: workload for you, fairness for students without reliable access, and fit with your policy. You pick, adapt and explain the reason to students.

Practice now

Choose one win. Write a weak and strong prompt, run both and compare.
Take an assignment you give and ask AI for five redesigns. Pick one and write the revised instructions.

Use any AI assistant you have. Do not paste private, client or patient information into it.

Check yourself

1. What should you do with an AI-written answer key?

2. Which is a good response to students using AI?

3. May you paste a current student’s paper into a free tool to test a rubric?

Ask the AI tutor

Ask anything about this lesson, in any language. The tutor is an AI: it can be wrong, and it never needs your personal details.

Next lesson: Guardrails for college instructors

AI-drafted. Checked by an automated validator and a separate AI reviewer; a person has not read every lesson. Translations and tutor answers are AI-made. Found a mistake? Tell us. AI can be wrong. General information only, not professional advice. Not affiliated with any AI company named. Current University is not accredited.