UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — After a successful first semester in fall 2024, the College of Arts and Architecture’s first-ever general-education AI (artificial intelligence) course is off and running this spring while the college moves to make it a permanent offering. The course is being offered this semester as a special topic.
AA 290G: Creating and Learning with AI is a three-credit, arts gen-ed course that offers students an opportunity to examine AI through the lens of the arts, while exploring and putting to work the latest AI tools.
Jacob Holster, assistant teaching professor of music education in the School of Music, developed the course in collaboration with Aaron Knochel, associate professor of art education in the School of Visual Arts. Holster teaches the hybrid course that meets once weekly in the college’s Center for Pedagogy in Arts and Design (C-PAD).
“As we were developing the course, one of our goals was to fast-track students’ understanding of what AI tools can do and to give them literacy around the topic so that they can be more informed as the technology changes,” Holster said.
AI research and pedagogy around technology are among Holster’s focus areas. He is part of a cross-disciplinary team of Penn State faculty members from the College of Arts and Architecture and the College of Education that has created a ChatGPT-powered, virtual reality (VR) app that provides professionals in a wide range of fields an interactive training tool aimed at improving communication and pedagogical skills with a focus on empathy.
“It is an objective fact that AI exists, and our response is to put ethical considerations at the forefront of the course while understanding the impact of AI on the arts and society more broadly,” Holster said.
The course begins by teaching the basic functions of AI, like text to text, text to image, and text to video. As the semester progresses, students begin to use AI tools and develop editing skills while working on a semester-long project that asks them to apply AI to their communities.
The final projects in the fall were remarkable, Holster said, with some of the more notable including a tutoring system to help students with disabilities, a cookbook for vegan-friendly meals, a children’s music album and even a model to predict the outcome of elections.
With a successful semester in the books, Holster said the focus is now on improving the course by collaborating with Nittany AI Alliance. Students will also visit the Palmer Museum of Art, where they will recreate some of the museum’s pieces using AI tools.
“Ultimately what we want is to provide the students with a set of skills that can be relevant and teach them how to apply those skills through the lens of the arts,” Holster said. "We imagine a society where we are more connected, and we are using AI technology and the arts to bring people together.”