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The Essentials of AI for Life and Society: A Full-Scale AI Literacy Course Accessible to All.
Zifan
Xu, Kristen Procko, Michael Munje, Kristin Patterson, Lea Sabatini, Joydeep
Biswas, and Peter Stone.
In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on
Artificial Intelligence, pp. 40730–6, January 2026.
Official
published version
Appeared in Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence
Course
webpage
In Fall 2023, we introduced a new AI Literacy class called The Essentials of AI for Life and Society (CS 109), a one-credit, seminar course consisting mainly of guest lectures, which was open to the entire university, including students, staff, and faculty. Building on its success and popularity, this paper describes our significant expansion of the course into a full-scale three-credit undergraduate course (CS 309), with an expanded emphasis on student engagement, interactivity, and ethics-related components. To knit together content from the guest lecturers, we implemented a flipped classroom. This model used weekly asynchronous learning modules--integrating pre-recorded expert lectures, collaborative readings, and ethical reflections--which were then unified by the course instructor during a live, interactive discussion session. To maintain the broad accessibility of the material (no prerequisites), the course introduced substantive, non-programming homework assignments in which students applied AI concepts to grounded, real-world problems. This work culminated in a final project analyzing the ethical and societal implications of a chosen AI tool. The redesigned course received overwhelmingly positive student feedback, highlighting its interactivity, coherence, and accessible and engaging assignments. This paper details the course's evolution, its pedagogical structure, and the lessons learned in developing a core AI literacy course. All course materials are freely available for others to use and build upon.
@InProceedings{peter_stone_eaai_2026,
author = {Zifan Xu and Kristen Procko and Michael Munje and Kristin Patterson and Lea Sabatini and Joydeep Biswas and Peter Stone},
title = {The Essentials of {AI} for Life and Society: A Full-Scale {AI} Literacy Course Accessible to All},
booktitle={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
year = {2026},
month = {January},
volume="40:47",
pages="40730--6",
url={https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/41521},
DOI={https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v40i47.41521},
location = {Singapore, Singapore},
abstract = {In Fall 2023, we introduced a new AI Literacy class called The Essentials of AI for Life and Society (CS 109), a one-credit, seminar course consisting mainly of guest lectures, which was open to the entire university, including students, staff, and faculty. Building on its success and popularity, this paper describes our significant expansion of the course into a full-scale three-credit undergraduate course (CS 309), with an expanded emphasis on student engagement, interactivity, and ethics-related components. To knit together content from the guest lecturers, we implemented a flipped classroom. This model used weekly asynchronous learning modules--integrating pre-recorded expert lectures, collaborative readings, and ethical reflections--which were then unified by the course instructor during a live, interactive discussion session. To maintain the broad accessibility of the material (no prerequisites), the course introduced substantive, non-programming homework assignments in which students applied AI concepts to grounded, real-world problems. This work culminated in a final project analyzing the ethical and societal implications of a chosen AI tool. The redesigned course received overwhelmingly positive student feedback, highlighting its interactivity, coherence, and accessible and engaging assignments. This paper details the course's evolution, its pedagogical structure, and the lessons learned in developing a core AI literacy course. All course materials are freely available for others to use and build upon.},
wwwnote={<a href="https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/41521">Official published version</a><br>
Appeared in Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence<br>
<a href="https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/Courses/309fall24/">Course webpage</a>},
}
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