Disciplinary Reflection in the AI Age

Does the rise of AI tools change how we teach? Does it change what we teach? How, in other words, should we think about the discipline-specific skills and knowledge that we share with students in the age of AI? AI raises many practical questions about our day-to-day teaching, but it also presents an opportunity to rethink more fundamental aspects of our disciplines. This presentation argues that departments across the California community colleges would benefit from focused discussion about such questions, and that the answers will almost certainly be different for different departments. What are the core skills and concepts that each discipline needs to defend against the temptations of AI shortcuts? What new skills might we adopt? What old skills might we deemphasize? What do we want to keep, and what do we want to change? And how might targeted use of AI tools help students learn our core skills and values more effectively?

This webinar will describe the experience of an instructor reflecting on these questions and will share some of the conclusions drawn so far. Most importantly, it will share templates that other disciplines and departments can use to organize their own versions of this conversation.

Spencer Robins is an instructor and co-chair of the English Department at Saddleback College in South Orange County, where he co-chairs taskforces on AI response for the English Department and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. He has almost two decades of teaching experience in California community college, university, and K-12 classrooms. He has led numerous professional development workshops on inquiry-focused pedagogy and has led several research projects in interdisciplinary literary studies.

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