In AI-rich classrooms, answers often arrive before questions. This creates a central paradox for liberal arts education: tools that promise intellectual support can also short-circuit the uncertainty and iteration through which thinking develops. This session reframes AI literacy as the ability to structure and sustain inquiry when answers are instantly available. Participants will examine how common assignment designs invite premature closure and will practice redesigning them using three strategies: staging tasks to delay answer-generation, requiring student reasoning before feedback, and separating composing from evaluation. Attendees will leave with adaptable frameworks for designing assignments that preserve critical thinking across disciplines, even when AI systems can generate polished responses on demand.
Benjamin Breyer is Senior Lecturer in English at Barnard College, where he teaches First-Year Writing and directs research on AI-mediated learning and rhetorical scaffolds in the liberal arts. His work focuses on designing writing instruction that reinforces critical reading, interpretive... Read More →
Friday October 16, 2026 1:00pm - 1:30pm EDT Blaustein 210
"Is this AI?" is a question vexing even the most media-savvy users today, as synthetic images and videos grow exponentially more convincing, with widespread circulation. But are there reliable "tells" and transferable frameworks for critical AI media literacy, even in this rapidly shifting landscape? This interactive presentation invites participants to examine a curated selection of images and videos and discuss: Is this AI? How do you know? Rather than offering easy answers, this session will use guided exercises and discussion to consider critical media AI literacy, inviting participants to think about visual artifacts & physics (is the hair texture right?); anatomy & proportions (are the joints strangely elongated?); and context & coherence (what is the file provenance or source?). Along the way, participants will consider deeper questions of authenticity, consent, and responsibility in an era of increasingly convincing synthetic media, and how critical AI media literacy has relevance in a liberal arts curriculum.
