In this lightning talk, I share our strategy for integrating AI into a CS1-level course, taking a conservative approach with a few modifications to the course. While academic honesty has been a major concern for instructors, we did not take any antagonistic approaches through detecting or circumventing AI use, but instead aimed to promote student ownership of their learning, balancing AI literacy with growth. Instead of embracing AI (a hug) by redesigning the course to feature large portions of AI-assisted coding, we instead introduced students to AI as a partner (a handshake) and helped them use it as a tool and to develop AI literacy.

We introduced a number of small changes to our curriculum based on ideas from prior work. We aimed to scaffold students’ use of AI by starting with establishing clear policies for AI use while also promoting opportunities for AI literacy through the use of in-class activities and labs. We modified a number of our existing assignments to include “AI time” with guided prompts for students to use AI for tasks such as explanation, example generation, and summarization. We also developed a few AI-specific activities to teach experimentation and prompt engineering, helping students develop their own best practices for using AI. In this talk, I will share two such assignments along with anecdotal observations of student experiences, to spark discussion on how educators can make an impact on AI literacy without extensive effort.