The Good, the Bad, or the Ugly? Reflections on the impact of AI in Teaching First-Semester Calculus

Topic: The Good, the Bad, or the Ugly? Reflections on the impact of AI in Teaching First-Semester Calculus

When: 26 March at 12.00-13.00

Where: Online

Speaker: Jan-Fredrik Olsen, Mathematics department, Faculty of Sciences, Lunds Universitet. 

Moderator: Rachel Forsyth, Educational development officer, Lund university

Spoken language: English

Abstract

This fall semester, I tried to adapt to and make use of AI in teaching my first-semester calculus course at Lund University. Given that current AI chatbots can solve most of the problems students are expected to work on, I saw this as a necessary step. However, I was surprised to find that students were initially reluctant to use AI as part of their studies, with some expressing frustration about being stuck for long periods of time because they could not get help from instructors.

In this talk, I will describe how I changed the course structure to help students use AI in a productive way, as well as analyse and discuss data from course evaluations, surveys, and the outcome of examinations. Based on these insights, I will reflect on when AI can be a valuable tool in a course - and when it might not be - and try to offer some general guidelines for the use of AI in teaching along the way.

The session focuses on the education, not the maths, and everyone is welcome.