‘50 States or Bust!’ with Peter Finn, Kingston University, Amy Tatum, Bournemouth University, Caroline Leicht, University of Southampton, Lauren C. Bell, Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Virginia USA

21 October – 1:30pm

Broadly based within the Web Team of the award-winning American Politics Group of the Political Studies Association, 50 States or Bust! is an ongoing project exploring the value of generative artificial intelligence as a tool for the research of state and territory level US politics. Project outputs have included report chapters, blog and commentary pieces, contributions to teaching practice compendiums and peer-reviewed work in Political Studies Review (2024) and Journal of American Studies (forthcoming). 

Among the lessons that can be drawn from the project are several relating to the impact of generative artificial intelligence on tools for teaching, learning, and pedagogy. This session will focus on these teaching, learning, and pedagogical lessons, with particular attention to the problems, but also potential, that generative AI offers in the classroom setting. 

The presentation part of the session will be split into two portions. In the first portion, the general 50 States or Bust! project will be introduced and the lessons that can be drawn from it will be provided. In the second portion, the presenters will provide examples of various activities that can be incorporated into the classroom to support instructors’ goals relative to generative AI. One activity, titled ‘GenAI Rockstars? Exploring the limits of GenAI via tour posters’, will be run through live on ChatGPT/DALL•E during the session. In this activity, the hook of discussing students’ favourite music and concerts is used to illustrate the problem of uncritical reliance on generative AI tools. Through the presentation and question and answer session that follows, participants will leave the webinar with examples of the challenges that generative AI presents in the classroom but also with a set of pedagogical tools to allow them to more confidently address student curiosity about -and use of - generative AI.