Course concept · AI literacy
Technology and Society: AI and the Humanities
A full first-year course where students use AI to think harder, not less.
- The challenge
- A sample course concept I designed for a first-year technology and society program.
- Audience
- First-year university students across majors, including Deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
- My role
- Course designer and developer of the course website and tutor.
- Tools
- Backward design
- Bloom’s taxonomy
- UDL
- Rubrics
- Brightspace cartridge
- Claude Code
01Scope
- 15 weeks in 5 three-week units.
- 45 sessions of 50 minutes, each planned to the minute.
- 26 readings and 15 weekly thinking logs.
- 6 signature activities, 9 studio activities and a final decision brief.
02Units
- New technology, old fears.
- What AI is and how to check it.
- Who benefits, pays and decides.
- Whose world AI builds.
- How we should decide.
03Activity design
Every activity has five steps, sequenced with Bloom’s taxonomy. Students can respond in writing, ASL or a sketch. Each activity offers lenses for eight majors.
Each activity sets one of four AI modes: Plan only, Co-draft, Directed or Open. Every graded piece carries an AI record. There are no AI detectors.
04Grading
- Signature activities: 60%.
- Final decision brief: 25%.
- Weekly thinking logs: 15%, graded for completion, never for grammar or length.
05Deliverables
- A 31-page course packet and 32 pages of lesson plans.
- A syllabus, scope and sequence, rubrics, reading list and instructor guide.
- A course website with the Pure Intellect Tutor.
- A course cartridge for Brightspace with 16 modules and 81 pages.
06Measuring success
The course has not been taught yet. In a live course, success would show in the thinking logs, the rubric scores on each signature activity and the quality of the final decision briefs.
Sample course concept. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any university.