York University students are learning to apply emerging technologies in meaningful ways that support critical thinking, ideation and design.
This fall, students enrolled in York University’s Bachelor of Design program will have an opportunity to realize their creative ideas with the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).
Wendy Wong, a professor in the Department of Design, offers students an AI learning experience in the first-year course Understanding Form and Context. The course introduces semiotic terms and communication theories that explain images and meanings in graphic design.
The course’s key project tasks students with using Adobe Photoshop to develop an integrated pixel-based promotional campaign for York’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD). In Winter 2025, Wong will introduce a new component of the project that encourages students to use GenAI platforms such as Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, ChatGPT or Google Gemini to visualize concepts across multiple touchpoints.
“Students still need to know how to use the standard tools to create professional, sharp designs,” says Wong, an internationally renowned expert in Chinese graphic design history who has taught at York since 2002. “But these AI tools provide a faster way for them to bring their creative vision to life. It’s my responsibility to make sure students are aware of emerging AI tools that can support their design practice.”
Wong is among the growing number of educators responding to the rising prominence of AI in higher education. In December of 2024, the Conference Board of Canada released the results of research it had conducted with the Future Skills Centre on how AI will change post-secondary teaching and learning. Interviews with 42 individuals fostering AI integration at their post-secondary institutions found that GenAI can help students with higher-order learning, including making connections between distant concepts, challenging their existing ways of thinking and generating novel ideas or content.
Meanwhile, a recent KPMG survey revealed that GenAI is reshaping how students learn. The survey of 3,804 Canadians ages 18 and up found 73 per cent use GenAI tools for academics, including research, generating ideas, editing and reviewing assignments, writing reports and creating presentations. The same survey found 77 per cent want their educational institution to teach them how to use AI.
The Office of the Vice-Provost Teaching and Learning at York supports faculty members adapting to the emergence of GenAI by providing resources on how to adapt teaching and assessment strategies and offering self-paced AI learning modules, including two Certificates in Artificial Intelligence pedagogies.
“AI has caused a rupture between the past and the future of education. It fundamentally changes how and what we teach, how we interact with our students and how they learn. I think it’s transformative,” says Andrew Maxwell, a professor at the Lassonde School of Engineering, where he leads the Bergeron Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology program.
Maxwell’s contributions to AI-enhanced learning includes the award-winning UnHack initiative, an AI-guided structured experiential design sprint for first-year undergraduate engineering students and students in other disciplines.
Students work in teams over three days to address environmental issues, such as reducing food waste, lowering carbon emissions or enhancing access to education.
This year’s event took place Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, and for the first time, students were encouraged to use generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) trained on Maxwell’s extensive research and experience. These AI tools guided students in thinking critically when identifying their problem, as well as the problem’s root causes and its impacts on different members of society.
Using the GPTs, students accessed immediate feedback early in the process, which Maxwell says is an efficient way to support 800 students working on a time-sensitive project. Faculty were also available to provide guidance on more complex aspects of the students’ process.
Maxwell says incorporating AI tools helped students formulate meaningful problem statements and comprehensive practical solutions, which they pitched to judges at the event’s conclusion.
Another initiative led by Maxwell helps to enrich AI-enabled student learning through a 12-week experiential online course called Innovation & Creativity. First-year students address complex workplace problems or identify new business opportunities in the course, which traditionally concluded with a reflective journal. Now, students interact with a GPT that asks them increasingly relevant and deeper questions about what they learned and what they would do differently next time.
The way Maxwell sees it, the potential for AI to enhance undergraduate education is vast, and university educators have a duty to provide this benefit to students while familiarizing them with these capabilities.
“Here we have technology to help students make better decisions, learn at their own speed and personalize their experience,” Maxwell says. “Any job these students are going into they are going to use AI tools in some way, so we need to explore them in our classrooms.”
With files from Sharon Aschaiek