Graidients 1.0

Please note: This post was entirely generated by an AI chatbot.

Actually, not really. But, how did it reading that make you feel? Would it have been okay to have used it for grammar and spellcheck? As a thesaurus? What about to have polished after a solid first draft? Where is your line? And is yours different from mine?

At the Center for Digital Thriving, we are currently prototyping a tool called Graidients that makes our "lines" visible when it comes to using generative AI to help with school assignments. Here's what it looks like 👇:

Graidients invites conversation about where our lines are, it scaffolds collective decision-making for a classroom, and it helps clarify which uses of AI are appropriate for a given assignment. Here's how it works 👇:

➊ Pick an assignment.

Here's an example we've been using in our youth voice co-design groups: "Write a 5-page analytical essay on key themes in the book The Great Gatsby."

➋ Collectively brainstorm ways to use AI.

This is a no judgement zone! Document every way someone might use AI to help with the assignment. We like to use an online whiteboarding tool like Miro for this, you could also use actual sticky notes.

➌ Map your lines.

Individually map the stickies onto the Graidients tool so that each person has the chance to reflect on a particular use and how they feel about it. Is it totally fine? Does it cross the line? Or is it in a gray area (mostly okay, not really sure, feels sketchy)?

➍ Take a step back.

Do a "gallery walk" and see where others mapped the uses and where there are differences and similarities. Squint your eyes and look at the distribution of the stickies. Are some people skewed left? Right? U-shaped or like a symetrical hill? Talk about it. Ask what people notice. Ask individual students about something they put in the gray area and why.

➎ Decide together.

We're still prototyping this part and will have stronger facilitation on it in the future, but in general the final step is to collectively agree on which uses crosses a line for this assignment so that everyone knows what officially is and isn't okay. Consider snapping a photo of your final map and uploading it to whatever AI tool you're using to help stay within bounds of the collective agreement. Then? Repeat. This tool is intended to be used in the context of a given assignment as we know such uses will vary across curricula.

Have you tried this? We would love to know what happened! Email us at beck_tench@harvard.edu with kudos, questions, or concerns. Thanks!