Cultivation and growth of 21st century skills

A student's silhouette intertwines with a futuristic AI construct, symbolizing the future of education where minds and machines learn together

Summary

As we design learning experiences that allow and accommodate the use of generative AI, we must remember to reinforce and build students’ skills in communication and collaboration. We must also encourage and invite creativity and innovation through offering more choices, more modalities, and more open-ended assignments and activities. One last important consideration in this regard is that we should strive to summon students to higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. With a well-designed curriculum, generative AI could support students’ in learning to communicate more effectively, in stretching their imaginations and creative muscles, and in facilitating higher-order thinking.

Defining, teaching, and assessing 21st century skills

“To participate effectively in the increasingly complex societies and globalized economy that characterize today’s world, students need to think critically, communicate effectively, collaborate with diverse peers, solve complex problems, adopt a global mindset, and engage with information and communications technologies, to name but just a few requirements” (Vivekanandan, 2019). While we may not explicitly account for these 21st century skills in developing our learning outcomes and curriculum, we should consider how our teaching will cultivate and contribute to the growth of them.

However, the question may naturally and inevitably arise: How can we ensure students grow in these skills and do not offload the work of communication, creation, and thinking critically to tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Duet AI in full? Authentic or alternative assessments and activities can play a substantial role in ensuring students still practice and build these 21st century skills while potentially using generative AI. Many different authentic or alternative assessments and activities exist and may help with meeting the challenges and answering the pedagogical questions posed by generative AI.

In addition, there are some authentic or alternative assessments and activities that can deliberately and conscientiously call for the use of AI. Below you will find some suggestions for authentic or alternative assignments and activities that both include the use of generative AI and ensure students remain active in their learning and practice some key 21st century skills, including communication/collaboration, creativity/innovation, and critical thinking. After we consider these suggestions, we will relate them to a scenario of teaching an environmental biology course.

Communication and collaboration

Here are some examples of assignments and activities suggested by ChatGPT. Teachers can use these strategies and others to foster and invite communication and collaboration among students, who may leverage generative AI as part of their learning and workflow.

  • Collaborative writing: Assign students a writing task where they work together to create a piece of written content related to their discipline. They can use generative AI to generate ideas, prompts, or even assist in the writing process, taking turns contributing and editing the content.
  • Presentation and debate: Assign students a topic or issue within their discipline, and have them prepare and deliver presentations to the class. After each presentation, encourage a debate where students can ask questions, challenge viewpoints, and engage in constructive discussions using generative AI-generated content as reference material.

Creativity and innovation

Here are some examples of assignments and activities suggested by ChatGPT. Teachers can use these strategies and others to cultivate and encourage creativity and innovation among students, who may leverage generative AI as part of their learning and workflow.

  • Content creation using multimedia: Instead of traditional essays or presentations, encourage students to produce content with multimedia created with generative AI tools. They can incorporate AI-generated text and visuals, interactive elements, and multimedia components to communicate their ideas creatively, capturing the attention and imagination of the audience. You will find a discussion of Microsoft Designer, one tool that would support this, here (Dvorak, 2023).
  • Data visualization with AI: Task students with creating dynamic and visually appealing data visualizations using generative AI. They can use AI algorithms to analyze large datasets from their discipline and generate visual representations that communicate complex information in innovative ways. Students can explore different visualization techniques, colors, and interactive features to make their data visualizations engaging and creative.

Critical thinking

Here are some examples of assignments and activities suggested by ChatGPT. Teachers can use these strategies and others to call for and bring about critical thinking and problem-solving among students, who may leverage generative AI as part of their learning and workflow.

  • Argumentation and debate: Assign controversial topics or issues for students to research and develop arguments. Encourage them to critically analyze the strengths and weaknesses of different perspectives, fact-checking, comparing, evaluating, synthesizing, and using AI-generated information from various tools to support their claims while also considering its potential limitations.
  • Reflection and self-assessment: Incorporate regular reflection activities where students can assess their own critical thinking skills, including how effectively they use AI tools. Encourage them to identify areas for improvement and develop strategies for enhancing their critical thinking abilities.

Scenario

In the environmental biology course you teach, you have decided to accept and embrace the use of generative AI by students as part of their learning. However, how can you ensure students still practice and build 21st century skills while making use of tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard? Below you will find some examples of possible ideas and strategies.

Communication and collaboration

You have introduced the HIPPO acronym that identifies the causes of ongoing defaunation: habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, population growth, and overharvesting. Students then join teams, in which they must work together to learn more about their assigned cause from the HIPPO acronym. 

As students engage with one another to learn more, they not only rely on ChatGPT for common perspectives (and potential misconceptions) but also locate and use peer-reviewed research and other authoritative sources for more accurate and reliable insights and information. After gathering further information, students collaborate on a shared presentation on the graphic design app Canva. They are working together to develop the materials they will share with the class through a Panopto video recording of the aforementioned slideshow. Through this activity, students learn to collaborate effectively with others and to use written, oral, and visual communication strategically to convey information and ideas.

Creativity and innovation

You have decided to transform your curriculum and design a multigenre research project (Langstraat, n.d.) that will play a key role in students’ learning this semester. Students will select an ongoing issue in environmental biology, such as defaunation. Then they will do research on that topic, gathering and analyzing sources, and then use themes or ideas from their sources to create a multigenre research project. This multigenre research project will not explicate but rather render the topic at hand (Romano, 1995): Students will not explain it but rather bring it to life through various artifacts, such as first-person diary entries from or podcast interviews with affected species, infographics featuring statistics, or PSA videos to hypothetically share on social media. 

While composing these artifacts, students will use ideas and possibilities produced by generative AI tools but will have to apply and compose them across various genres. Being asked to compose these various artifacts, even with input from generative AI, will challenge students to use their imagination. While practicing communication in these various genres, students will also become familiar with the discourse and best practices for each modality.

Critical thinking

To conclude the unit on the sixth mass extinction in your environmental biology course, you decide to eliminate the test and replace it with an alternative assessment: a reflective portfolio in which students must keep video diaries for a week and then reflect on how their actions each day may contribute to or prevent ongoing defaunation. Students cannot rely on ChatGPT or other tools for this as much as they would have for a generic essay about the topic, and the assignment forces them to grapple with and analyze how current human systems as a whole cause defaunation. Students will engage with higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Armstrong, 2010): applying what they have learned about HIPPO, analyzing and evaluating the environmental impact of their own actions, and synthesizing these observations to identify how they as individuals and human systems altogether could change to better support ecosystems.