Teaching in the Age of AI

This fall semester, I taught Embedded Systems as a technical elective for fourth-year computer engineering students. 

Since most homework and many projects are now trivially solvable by AI (Large Language Models, LLMs), they are no longer worth the instructor’s effort to assign and grade. Therefore, I did not assign any homework. Instead, I encouraged students to use LLMs during class as a tool for active learning.

For each topic, I presented a short, real-world embedded example and then posed a question, such as “calculate the amount of stack used by the given C function.” Students asked their LLM for an answer right there in class. Ten minutes later, I invited one student to the board to explain the solution using a marker and whiteboard.

The LLM produces an answer but the student must defend it. "Why does this approach work?",  "Where does it fail?" I step in to guide them when they are unable to answer. This is far more fun than just explaining everything myself. It also gives me time to take a break from constantly speaking. One could even argue that this simulates a job interview.

For grading, I used traditional pen-and-paper exams with multiple-choice questions; no LLMs were allowed during the exam. However, I prepared the questions with the help of LLMs, of course!