A Guide For AI-Revolutionizing Academic Teaching

If you have not been living in isolation over the past 3 years, you have likely noticed the profound impact that artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models (LLMs), has had on our daily lives. These innovative solutions are accessible, often free or relatively affordable for personal use, and offer tremendous potential. Consequently, AI usage has been expanding rapidly across a wide range of applications. Amidst these sweeping changes, academia—often regarded as a steadfast institution—has also begun to feel the influence of AI in numerous ways.

In higher education circles, it has become almost routine to discuss how AI is influencing student behavior and to criticize the practice of students submitting papers written by ChatGPT or other large language models (LLMs) [1]. Similarly, some scholars are also misusing LLMs to draft academic papers, creating a complex set of ethical, legal, and economic challenges [2]. I could continue in this negative vein for several more paragraphs without even consulting Google. However, I personally do not view AI as a threat to academia, as if it were some destructive force emerging from Tartarus. On the contrary, it offers countless opportunities to enhance how academics support and engage students in learning.

As researchers and lecturers, teaching classes is part of our role, even when it may not always be our primary enthusiasm. Personally, as a mathematician, I strongly believe in optimizing an objective function; therefore, my goal is to create the most effective learning experience for students with the least expenditure of time and effort. This multi-objective optimization challenge drives my journey to leverage AI in enhancing my classes while simultaneously reducing the time required to achieve these improvements.

In this blog post, I would like to share my personal guide on creating class content quickly and easily using online AI tools. Before we dive in (no, not chatGPT editing, I personally decided to use this term [3]), here is the complete list of tools we’ll use, along with their specific purposes:

1. Scite - To find relevant papers for your class.
2. chatGPT - To extract interesting information and create summaries.
3. Artflow - For generating an AI avatar.
4. Heygen - A tool for video generation.
5. descript - To generate subtitles for your videos.
6. notebooklm - For generating audio content.
7. Zoom - Excellent for recording lectures and generating transcriptions.

Before class

You are sitting in your office (or at home, because it is almost 2025 and this should be pritty common at this point [4]) and starting to prepare for your lectures. You probably have some slides or printed pages with the lecture's materials. Now, you wish to update them somewhat for this year and use AI to make it friendly for your students.

Start by gathering key academic resources. Head to Scite to find relevant research papers and reliable sources for your class topic. You can search for papers that provide foundational insights, recent studies, or any specific theories you want to include. Select and download any papers that you plan to reference in the class (and your video).

With your materials ready, head to ChatGPT to refine the content. Paste in sections of the research or notes you’ve gathered and ask ChatGPT to summarize, clarify, or rephrase them in a format that’s accessible for students. For example, you can request a concise outline of main points, a brief script, or engaging examples related to your topic. Don’t spend too much time perfecting this part, as you’ll later ask ChatGPT to condense it into 400-word sections. Each of these sections roughly translates to about 3 minutes of video narration. For a 15-minute video—which I personally recommend—you’ll need around 2,000 words in total.

Now that you have your content, it's time to create a virtual persona for your video. Utilize Artflow to generate an AI-based avatar that matches the tone of your class. Customize the avatar to present a professional and engaging appearance or any style that resonates with you. I appreciate this tool because it enables you to create a virtual "you" by uploading your own images.

Figure 1. An AI-generated virtual me, showing how I magically generating knowledge using Artflow.

Once your avatar is prepared, proceed to Heygen to create your video. Upload your avatar and enter the script generated by ChatGPT. Heygen will animate the avatar to deliver your script, bringing the lecture material to life. If desired, you can also incorporate additional visuals or slides to boost engagement.

After completing your video, take the time to review it for clarity and relevance. You might also consider adding subtitles or visual highlights for key points, utilizing tools like Descript if you wish. Personally, I believe that videos with subtitles are significantly more beneficial during learning sessions, so I always ensure to upload videos with subtitles, and Descript does an excellent job with English.

After class

Congratulations! You’ve just finished another thought-provoking, knowledge-rich lecture. Hopefully, you recorded it using your Zoom account, as we’ll use it to create a summary for your students.

First, go to your Zoom account online and navigate to the "Recordings" tab. Select the relevant recording to access the automatic transcription of the lecture. Download this text, then proceed to ChatGPT and ask it to summarize the lecture, specifying any particular aspects you’d like emphasized. For example, you might ask ChatGPT to focus on the mathematics content or exclude any student comments. For lengthy lectures, you may need to split the text into smaller chunks for ChatGPT to handle. Once you receive the summaries from ChatGPT, review them quickly to ensure there are no errors in the output. When you're satisfied, move the text to any text editing software you prefer (such as Nopepad++ or Microsoft Word) and save it as a file.

Now, upload this file to NotebookLM to generate an audio overview. You can customize the audio by providing instructions in the designated text box. I recommend something along these lines: "You are a university professor teaching a class on ---insert subject here---. This is the ---insert session number here--- lecture on ---insert topic here---. Create an audio summary to explain the lecture to students, with a focus on ---insert focus here---." After a few minutes, you should have a lively dialogue summarizing the lecture, highlighting key concepts for your students.

For example, here is the audio file I generated for my first renfinforcment learning class:

To be clear, this audio does not replace the lecture itself. However, a 15-minute, engaging audio summary can be an excellent resource for students to listen to while commuting, walking, or even in place of music.

Closing remarks

In this rapidly evolving landscape of education, harnessing the power of AI offers unprecedented opportunities to enhance the learning experience for both educators and students. By effectively utilizing AI tools such as the ones mentioned above, you can streamline your teaching processes, create engaging content, and foster a more interactive classroom environment. As we continue to navigate the integration of AI into academia, it is essential to embrace these innovations, allowing them to complement our teaching methods rather than detract from the invaluable human connection that is at the heart of education. Together, we can revolutionize academic teaching and empower the next generation of learners to thrive in an increasingly complex world.

Thank you for joining me on this journey!

References

1. Irfan, Muhammad, L. I. A. M. Murray, and Sajjad Ali. "Integration of artificial intelligence in academia: A case study of critical teaching and learning in higher education." (2023).
2. Lazebnik, Teddy and Rosenfeld, Ariel. "Detecting LLM-assisted writing in scientific communication: Are we there yet?". Journal of Data and Information Science. (2024).
3. AI phrase finder. "Why Does ChatGPT Use ‘Delve’ a Lot?". (2024)
4. Barrero, Jose María, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis. "The evolution of work from home." Journal of Economic Perspectives 37, no. 4 (2023): 23-49.

P.S. I utilized numerous AI tools in the preparation, editing, and A/B testing of this blog post (including this line). While this may not be particularly relevant to the average reader, I felt it was only fair to disclose this upfront.