Since January, I’ve had a chance to teach a new course—”AI for the Humanities“—at BYU. The course evolved from a conversation I had with my colleagues Jeremy Browne, Kathie Gossett, and Rob Reynolds at our College’s annual assessment retreat in early May of 2025. As we talked, we tried to think about the sorts of courses that the Office of Digital Humanities could add to our arsenal and that would have broad value to students studying the humanities. A course on generative AI seemed exactly the sort of thing that made sense. So during lunches, I made the rounds to other departments to see if they thought such a class would benefit their students. We got enough of a response that I brought a full proposal to the College in the early fall.
Something I thought would be critical is listing the course outside the Digital Humanities and Technology (DigHT) classes, as they tend not to have much visibility for students who aren’t completing our minor. I knew that the College had its own course listing (HCOLL), and I proposed creating the course under that heading. Leslee Thorne-Murphy, the associate dean of curriculum, was happy to support that request. But she counseled me that students don’t look at those courses either. Instead, she suggested that I collaborate with other departments in the College to have “AI for the Humanities” listed as one of their several different courses. This was good advice, it turns out: every single one of the students in the course came there via Editing and Publishing, English, or Interdisciplinary Humanities.
In the end, my course had six different listings:
- DigHT 315
- DigHT 590
- ELING 421
- ENGL 326
- HCOLL 480
- IHUM 390
I was fortunate that my colleagues in these other departments were willing to sign on to this venture. I worked with each department to ensure the class would meet the curricular needs of their various course designations.
It had been quite a while since I had designed a course completely from scratch, and even longer since I’d had to do one about a topic that was in such constant flux. This meant that I was often just a day ahead of my students, as I regularly scoured the web and the library’s databases for readings that would help us move in the direction that seemed right. Most class sessions ended with me telling the students that I didn’t have the next reading figured out, but I would before midnight. Now that the semester is complete, I’ve compiled the reading list so there’s a record for others to see.
While the readings were difficult to find, I had a clear sense the assignments from the beginning of the design process. I wanted students to
- experiment with AI in their writing, using it as a foil and a respondent, so I needed a writing assignment
- read about AI beyond what I was assigned in class, so I needed an annotated bibliography assignment
- explore biases that are encoded into large language models via training data, so I needed an assignment that surfaced algorithmic oppression
- perform tasks that editors frequently encounter and then compare their work to what genAI would output when faced with the same task, so I needed an editing assignment
- experience the ability of agentic AI to rapidly create prototype software that serves a small audience, so I needed a vibe-coding assignment
- think hard about how they could talk to potential employers about their thoughtful use of AI and what humans can do that AI cannot, so I needed an assignment that focused on interviewing for jobs
On the whole, I thought most of these assignments worked well. There’s no doubt that I will make revisions to them along with the readings for the next version of the course (tentatively scheduled for January 2027).
But it seems important to share the current work with my broader circle of colleagues. To that end, I’ve published a collection devoted to the course on Knowledge Commons earlier today. Everything from the syllabus to my assignment for engagement (AKA participation) is included and now sports a shiny DOI, which means they will remain findable for years to come. As always, my pedagogical work is licensed with a CC-BY license, so please come, grab what you want, and re-use/re-mix to your heart’s content. Let’s all work together to help our students succeed in the world we’ve created for them!
