Teaching with AI: Resources and Reflections from the 8/13/2025 CEL AI Workshop
- KU CEL
- Aug 18
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 19
On August 13, the CEL organized a faculty workshop focused on teaching with AI, gathering colleagues from all four KU colleges and Rohrbach Library. The session's goal was not to explore every new AI tool available or to discover a "magic solution" to encourage smarter, more responsible AI use; instead, we aimed to assist faculty in creating meaningful syllabus statements, designing thoughtful assignments, and considering student motivation in the context of AI.
Recommended Resource
If you’re looking for a practical, approachable starting point, we highly recommend Teaching with AI, which is open access through Rohrbach Library. It’s accessible, relevant, and immediately useful for KU faculty.
Workshop Tools
During the workshop, we used a custom Syllabus Development worksheet (below) to guide faculty through clarifying the “why” of their teaching, which naturally leads into writing AI syllabus statements tailored to their courses. The worksheet draws on multiple resources and books about crafting class-specific policies (rather than one-size-fits-all university policies). As a stand-alone document, it may feel a bit disconnected, but paired with the workshop discussions, it helped ground the conversation in each faculty member’s own teaching context.
Two Key Challenges
As we see it, there are two distinct challenges when it comes to AI in higher education:
Learning AI: a technical, often discipline-specific issue (and often outside the direct scope of the CEL).
Teaching with—or around!—AI: a pedagogy-first and technology-second approach that CEL advocates.
AI may be the “flavor of the month,” but the underlying question is timeless: how do we design courses that motivate students, foster authentic learning, and adapt responsibly to new challenges?
By the end of the workshop, participants left with revised syllabus statements, stronger assignments, and, perhaps most importantly, a renewed sense of clarity as we approach the semester.
