Designing Courses and Assessments in Times of AI: A Practice-Oriented Workshop

Generative AI is rapidly changing how students read, write, study, and prepare for assessment – especially in text- and argument-driven disciplines such as politics, law, and economics. This workshop offers a practice-oriented introduction to designing teaching and assessment that still foster deep learning in an AI-rich environment. Building on the concept of constructive alignment, we will examine how intended learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessment tasks can be aligned to ensure students genuinely think, argue, and apply knowledge rather than simply outsourcing work to AI tools.

Participants will be introduced to core didactic principles and the concept of generative learning activities and briefly invited to reflect on their own courses through these lenses. We then consider how AI can both support and undermine key learning processes, and how it can be integrated to scaffold – rather than replace – students’ thinking. Finally, we discuss implications for assessment design, including small yet powerful adjustments that make AI use transparent and aligned with disciplinary learning goals.

Note: The workshop is aimed at lecturers and professors in politics, law, and economics. You don't need any prior expertise with AI tools; the focus is on pedagogy and course design rather than on technical details. Students and researchers are also welcome to join this workshop

About the speaker: Prof. Sascha Schneider, University of Zurich

Prof. Schneider is a professor of Educational Technology at the Institute of Education, University of Zurich. His research focuses on the question of how learning media can be designed to improve learning. Methodologically, experiments are conducted and analysed, or data are meta-analytically evaluated. Prof. Schneider's research also focuses on cognitive, emotional, motivational, social and metacognitive processes in learning with digital media such as text- and image-based websites, animations, videos, but also interactive media such as learning video games and augmented and virtual reality environments. However, the focus is not only on teaching-learning processes, but also on retrieval processes that become necessary when working on learning tasks but also quizzes.

Sascha Schneider studied Educational Science and English as Bachelor and Educational Technology and Continuing Education as Master. In his dissertation he investigated the effects of decorative images on learning with media. In his postdoctoral thesis, he focused on the effect of choice as an autonomy enhancer and motivator in digital learning environments.