Student learningfor Grades 9–12, Higher Ed
Human + AI Studio
Students create a short piece with AI as a prompt partner, log every suggestion they keep, change, or reject, and defend their human choices in a studio critique.
All activities Professional learning
Co-Creation, Not Substitution
Educators sort real classroom and faculty tasks along a human-to-AI spectrum, co-create something with AI while keeping their own thinking visible, and write the disclosure and syllabus statements that make the line clear to students.
Overview
The useful question isn't "AI or no AI?" It's "who does which part of the thinking, and does that serve the learning goal?" In this session participants sort classroom and faculty tasks along a spectrum from human-only to AI-assisted to AI-generated with human review, then experience a creative co-creation round where AI widens the options and the human chooses, transforms, and owns the result. They finish by writing a student disclosure statement and a course AI-use statement, with a higher education syllabus variant, so students know exactly where AI belongs in each assignment, if it belongs at all.
Objectives
- Participants will place tasks on a human-only, AI-assisted, or AI-generated-with-review spectrum and justify each placement by the learning goal.
- Participants will co-create a product with AI in which their own choices and transformations are documented and visible.
- Participants will write a student-facing disclosure statement and an assignment-level AI-use statement for their course or syllabus.
Materials
On paper
- Handout A: Collaboration Spectrum Sort (1 set per table, cut apart, with sorting mat)
- Handout B: Co-Creation Log and Disclosure Builder (1 per person)
- Handout C: Model AI-Use Statements, K–12 and Higher Ed (1 per person)
- A long strip of masking tape on the floor or wall labeled HUMAN ONLY at one end and AI-GENERATED at the other
On screen
- A generative AI chatbot your district or institution approves, on participants' devices if they have approved accounts, otherwise projected by the facilitator
- Optional: a shared document where participants post their AI-use statements for feedback
Before you start
- Print Handouts B and C; print and cut Handout A. Lay the masking-tape spectrum on the floor or a wall.
- Write a short welcome paragraph for the session with help from your approved AI tool, revise it yourself, and add a one-sentence disclosure of exactly what the AI did. You'll read it in the Hook.
- Look up any existing district or institution guidance on AI use and academic integrity so participants' statements can align with it.
- For the co-creation round, pick a creative task that fits your audience (a writing prompt, a lab scenario, a discussion question, a project hook). A default is provided in the Create step.
Step by step
-
10–5 min
Hook
Who wrote this?
Read your welcome paragraph aloud. Ask: "Human or AI?" Take a quick vote. Then read your disclosure: e.g., "I asked an AI tool for three possible openings, combined two of them, rewrote every sentence in my own voice, and added the story about my first classroom myself." Ask: "Did knowing what the AI did change how you feel about it?"
Facilitator noteMost people are more comfortable once they know the specific division of labor. That's the argument for specific disclosure over a yes/no "AI used" checkbox.
-
25–20 min
Explore
Walk the spectrum
Tables sort the Handout A task strips into three zones: Human only, AI-assisted (human leads, AI supports), and AI-generated (human reviews and decides). Then each table picks its two most-debated strips and physically places them on the masking-tape spectrum, defending the spot aloud. Ask the room: "What would move this strip toward the other end?" (Usually: a different learning goal.)
Facilitator noteHold the line on the core principle: placement depends on the learning goal. If the goal is to develop a student's own voice, the writing stays human. If the goal is to analyze feedback, AI-drafted feedback may be fine.
-
320–35 min
Create
Co-creation round
Each person uses the approved AI tool (or the facilitator's projected tool) on a creative task. Default task: design an opening scenario for a unit you teach. Step 1: ask the AI for ten unusual "what if" hooks. Step 2: cross out at least six, and note why on Handout B. Step 3: combine, twist, or localize one of the survivors into something that's yours: add your students' community, a real constraint, your own question. Step 4: log what the AI contributed and what you contributed.
Facilitator noteUnplugged version: use the printed mock list in the Unplugged section. The point isn't the AI's ideas. It's the human choosing, rejecting, and transforming, which is where creativity shows.
-
435–42 min
Debrief
Whose idea is it?
Pairs trade their final hook and Handout B log. Ask: "Point to the part that's unmistakably yours." Share a few aloud. Then ask: "When did the AI widen your thinking, and when did it pull you toward something generic?" Chart answers under "Augmented" and "Flattened."
Facilitator noteGeneric, middle-of-the-road output is a predictable result of how these models work: they tend toward likely text. Rejecting the obvious is a human creative skill worth teaching explicitly.
-
542–50 min
Model
Anatomy of a good disclosure
Walk through Handout C. A useful student disclosure names (1) the tool in general terms, (2) what I asked it to do, (3) what I kept, changed, or rejected, and (4) how I checked it. A useful course statement is assignment-level, not one rule for the whole year, and explains why each level fits the learning goal. Point out the higher ed syllabus variant and its three levels.
Facilitator noteBe honest about enforcement: AI-writing detectors are unreliable and can falsely flag students, including non-native English writers. Clear expectations, disclosure, and process evidence (drafts, logs, conversations) work better than detection.
-
650–68 min
Create
Write your statements
Each person drafts two things on Handout B. (1) A student disclosure template for one upcoming assignment. (2) An AI-use statement for that assignment or course, adapting the K–12 or Higher Ed model on Handout C: which level applies, why it fits the learning goal, what students must disclose, and what happens if they're unsure. Tables swap drafts and check: "Could a student tell exactly what's allowed?"
Facilitator noteFaculty often write statements that are clear about prohibitions and silent about permitted uses. Push for at least one sentence on how AI may help.
-
768–75 min
Transfer
Try it with students
Each person names the assignment where they'll introduce their statement and disclosure template, and one way they'll ask students for feedback on it. Optional: students place the same Handout A strips (student tasks only) on the spectrum before seeing your statement, and you compare their thinking with yours.
Facilitator noteStudents may place tasks differently than you expect. Their reasoning makes a great opening for a class norms conversation.
Paper or screen
Unplugged
The sort, spectrum walk, and statement writing are all unplugged. For the co-creation round, give each person this printed list, a mock AI brainstorm (fictional output) for "ten 'what if' hooks for a unit on water": What if your town's water came from a single well? What if a drop of water could keep a diary? What if every school had to pay for the water it used? What if a river sued a factory? What if you had to design a city on a floating island? What if ice sank instead of floated? What if your school garden had only one bucket a day? What if rain fell only once a year? What if you traced your breakfast's water footprint? What if the town water tower could tell its own history? They cross out, combine, and transform just as they would with a live tool, and log their choices on Handout B.
Digital
Participants with approved accounts run the co-creation round on their own devices; otherwise the facilitator projects the tool and takes table requests. Statements can be drafted in a shared document so colleagues comment in the margins, and faculty can paste their final syllabus statement straight into their LMS course shell. Students under 13 never need their own AI account; the teacher drives the tool on a projector.
Does it need a screen? The live co-creation round lets participants feel the difference between AI widening their options and AI replacing their judgment, which a printed list can only approximate. The evidence of learning isn't the AI's output; it's the Handout B log showing what the human chose, rejected, and transformed.
Evidence of learning
What you should be able to see or collect if it worked.
- Sort justifications cite the learning goal, not a blanket rule about AI.
- Co-creation logs show specific rejections and transformations, and the final product includes something unmistakably the participant's own.
- Disclosure templates ask students what they asked, what they changed or rejected, and how they checked.
- Course or syllabus statements are assignment-level, explain why, and include at least one permitted use and a "when in doubt, ask" path.
Adaptations
- Higher Ed faculty
- Use only the faculty and college-level strips in the sort, adapt the Higher Ed syllabus model on Handout C, and add a discussion of discipline-specific norms for AI in research and publication.
- Grades 6–8 teachers
- Simplify the disclosure to three sentence frames ("I used AI to…", "I changed…", "I checked by…") and model them on the projector with a teacher-driven tool.
- Librarians
- Connect disclosure to citation: co-teach how students credit AI assistance alongside traditional sources, following whatever citation style your campus uses.
Standards connections
Teachers write assignment-level AI-use statements and a student disclosure template, preparing students to credit AI help honestly while keeping creative ownership.
- TEKS
- ethics and laws (c)(9)creativity and innovationTEKS sections: Technology Applications §126.17–§126.19, high school Technology Applications courses (19 TAC Chapter 126)
Reflect
- How am I fostering collaboration between humans and AI systems in educational projects and research?
- Where in my course does AI risk replacing the thinking the assignment is meant to build?
- How will I know whether students' use of AI augmented their creativity or flattened it?
Take it to your students
Introduce your assignment-level AI-use statement and disclosure template with your next major assignment. Collect the disclosures with the work, and bring three to your PLC or department to discuss what they reveal about how students actually used AI.
Pairs well with
- Augmented K–16 AI Learning FrameworkA K–16 frame for where human-AI collaboration fits as learners grow.
- AI Custom Instructions LibraryExamples of setting up an AI tool to support, not substitute for, student thinking.
