Plan to join us at the April 3rd noon Zoom DOLCE on Teaching with Generative AI
Dear Faculty Colleagues,
Please register now to join us Friday April 3rd at noon for two Generative AI presentations at our April DOLCE. If you can’t join us live on Zoom, please visit The Wheel in the subsequent week to watch the recording.
We will enjoy presentations by two DOLCE speakers.
Sociology Lecturer and Researcher Dr. Yael Teff-Seker will give a talk titled “When in Rome?: Responsible Decriminalization of AI Use in Student Assignments.” She will discuss alternative AI-friendly assignments and pedagogical strategies she has developed that ensure effective learning and the creation of holistic supportive learning environments. While highlighting student feedback, she will discuss the place for AI as a helpful learning tool while reducing its negative pedagogical effects. She will share some ideas and techniques regarding how effective teaching can coexist with AI, including assignments that discourage “black box” AI use for analysis, but allow ethical and pedagogically useful interactions with AI platforms.
Undergraduate Council Chair David Kyle will present “Making Student and AI Thinking Visible: KNOBEs in Undergraduate Sociology.”
Across two large undergraduate courses at UC Davis, Kyle tested a simple idea: assignment design determines whether student thinking stays visible or disappears behind polished answers. In SOC 1 (200 students), students could use AI for some elements if they disclosed it; most did not. In SOC 2 (150 students), assignments required students to state a leadership role, cite sources, apply concepts to real cases, and sign off on their reasoning and AI disclosure. Whether or not they used AI, students had to show how their answers were produced.
Compliance was nearly complete. What changed was not enforcement, but visibility: the structure made the process of thinking part of the work itself. This approach became KNOBE Charts, a structured assignment format and optional file protocol that requires students to document their reasoning, sources, and decisions alongside their answers. Kyle will discuss what this reveals about honesty, accountability, and a deeper question: not whether students use AI, but whether we can still see how knowledge is produced.
I hope you can join us for these short talks and the conversations that follow. See you on April 3rd!
Dr. Andy Jones
Academic Director, Academic Technology Services
Editor in Chief, The Wheel
University of California, Davis
DOLCE talks on Teaching with Generative AI
Friday, April 3rd at Noon via Zoom
Register now!
Imaged created by generative AI