Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to change learning, teaching, and evaluation. Sydney University has encouraged incorporating generative AI in learning and teaching environments. This presentation summarizes our experience with a broader set of Generative AI (text and text-to-image) systems in IDEA9201, an elective UoS in the Master of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts. Unlike most design experiments that place GenAI in the ideation and brainstorming stages, we used this technology to “sketch” and visualize ideas that were already taking form. Throughout the semester, we combined traditional design methods with Design Fiction and GenAI to develop fictional products intended to raise questions about the near future. This approach allowed students to effectively achieve the stated learning goals while developing a critical view of the possibilities and limitations of GenAI. Our approach of combining design fiction with GenAI engines as visualization tools can be adapted, escalated, or condensed for various contexts and disciplines concerned with human-technology relations.
Teaching@Sydney