How AI encourages creative solutioning
One group of students in the undergraduate class, called “‘Me’ in Meals!” is proposing a food passport to increase culinary diversity on and around campus. Shay Kaleo, one team member, credits the custom GPT with broadening their range of thinking.
“We wanted to have early prototyping that we can do,” Kaleo said. “Because of the budget we have, it’s very hard to come up with ideas that can be cheap, or ideas that can be done within a day of planning instead of going through all these companies. And it came up with a lot of stuff that we couldn’t think of with just group discussions.”
The custom GPT is consistently workshopped by both teacher and students, with the script changing depending on course needs. With assistance from ChatGPT students are able to prepare for meetings, role-play, support grant funding, brainstorm and work out logistics to solve real community problems.
“They're role playing how they talk to stakeholders,” Lester said. “How would they approach a funder? How would they approach a student at the MU (Memorial Union)?”
From the outset, Lester and her students co-designed a shared AI policy through open dialogue about ethical use, creative risks and the values they wanted their classroom AI to reflect. These conversations about what feels helpful, what feels extractive and how to engage AI with care and intention continued throughout the course, deepening as students explore new ways of working with their custom GPT.
As part of their action research, Team ‘Me’ in Meals! conducted surveys whose responses were imported into the custom GPT to streamline what students wanted to see most on campus. According to the team, the custom GPT suggested food stands, farmers’ markets, cooking classes, a “5 ingredient challenge” and the settled-on proposal — food passports.
“ASU’s a really diverse school,” said team member Julissa Carbajal-Gontes. “They teach diversity in who we include and not exclude, and this is a way to try to get people to learn about other cultures in a way that’s kind of forgotten about, in food.”
Understanding AI as a co-collaborator
Community solutions proposed in the course range from building shade structures to provide sun protection for pedestrians and combat the heat, to creating resources for finding affordable housing for students. For Lester, the goal in including AI in the planning process is to use it as a co-collaborator instead of a tutor.
“What if AI could be more than something that just automates tasks,” Lester said. “What if, instead of just giving students answers, it helped them ask better questions, experiment with ideas and create new possibilities?”
The customized ChatGPT bot is set up with parameters including:
- “Be a coach, not a fixer.”
- “Keep the responses short with questions to encourage engagement.”
- “Use quick humor and GenZ inspired language.”
The bot was also built with Lester’s teaching style, sense of humor and playfulness.
According to Lester, the bot is also preloaded with the course syllabus, as well as activities and assignments. There are four starting prompts that can be updated as students move through the course, such as, “Do you need help roleplaying as a stakeholder?”
While some students find the custom GPT to be an integral partner to their solution proposals, other students have found it best to lean on the chatbot for inspiration and ideas only, due to the nature of their particular projects.
ASU student Diallah Athari and her group, “S.A.S.H: Safe Affordable Student Housing,” are creating resources that will hopefully assist and match students with affordable and quality housing.
“It’ll give me ideas and things to jump off of,” Athari said. “I feel like it’s a good, broad scope of what the average mind could come up with … but it’s not doing the work for me.”
Final reflections
According to Lester, a co-learner mindset is required, alongside flexibility and fluidity in order to design, iterate, and edit the bot. The goal is for the custom GPT to evolve alongside the course, shifting in tone and function based on student feedback, project needs and the learning environment.
“The idea is for ChatGPT to be a partner, being a co-creator, a coach, a guide or cheerleader,” Lester said, “Whatever students want this ChatGPT to be for them.”
While the custom GPT bots are far from perfected, Lester said workshopping them with her students in real time has been a unique experience.
“Part of the journey and fun is that students have an equal voice in creating this,” Lester said. “It's so rich for me to sit back and really understand how to foster ethical AI, responsible AI and doing that with learners helps us two-fold: understand how to use it, but also get a sense of their critical thinking that's happening with it.”