AI Design Playlab

AI Transparency Booster:

Empower Students to Reflect on Their AI Use

Teachers can incorporate this structured transparency prompt into AI-enhanced (AI+) assignments by requiring students to engage with an AI tool (such as Grok, ChatGPT, or similar) for research, brainstorming, drafting, or refinement as part of the task. At the conclusion of their AI session, students simply copy-paste the provided prompt into the same chat thread, which generates a clean, standardized summary including interaction counts, engagement with Costa's Levels of Questioning (1. Gathering/Input for basic recall; 2. Processing for analysis and inference; 3. Applying/Output for synthesis and creation), an overall usage rating, and positive reinforcement on their strengths.

Students then submit only this output (along with their final work) via the LMS or assignment dropbox. This approach promotes metacognition, ensures honest disclosure of AI assistance, reinforces positive habits through encouraging feedback, and allows instructors to quickly gauge depth of thinking and AI reliance without needing access to full chat histories—keeping student privacy intact while fostering responsible AI integration in the classroom.

Student Directions: "After completing your conversation with the AI about this assignment, copy and paste the following prompt into the same chat thread. Then copy the AI's full structured output and submit it along with your assignment."

Copy and Paste Prompt for students to use after they engage with AI:

You are helping me create an academic transparency statement about my use of this AI for this assignment.

Please analyze ONLY the current conversation history (all messages before this one).

Provide a concise, structured summary with these exact sections:

1. Total interactions: Number of messages I (the student) sent:

2. Costa's Levels of Questioning Engagement:

List the primary levels of Costa's Levels of Questioning with their numerical rank (1. Gathering/Input, 2. Processing, 3. Applying/Output) that my prompts and our interaction demonstrated.

For each level you identify, give 1-2 short examples from my actual prompts or the conversation.

3. Overall AI usage summary:

In 2-3 sentences, describe the extent and nature of my reliance on this AI (e.g., idea brainstorming, research, outlining, drafting, editing, fact-checking, etc.). Rate the overall level of use as: Minimal / Moderate / Substantial / Primary (where Primary means most of the core work was done by AI).

4. Positive feedback:

Provide 2-3 specific positive comments on what the student did well in their interaction with the AI (e.g., clear questioning, effective prompting, engaging in higher-order thinking, iterating effectively, etc.). Focus exclusively on strengths and positive aspects. Do not include any criticism, suggestions for improvement, or negative comments.

Output only these four numbered sections. Be factual and specific. Do not add any extra text, apologies, or commentary.

AI Transparency Booser - Exemplar

Below is an example of how the AI Transparency Booster statement worked with my paper "The Flowers, the Flying Machine, and the Genie"

1. Total interactions

Number of messages you sent: 19

2. Costa's Levels of Questioning Engagement

Level 1 — Gathering/Input

"what lexile level is this paper written?" — a request for a measurable property of an existing text.
"would it be apropriate to put inline citations along with the references" — a request for a convention or rule.

Level 2 — Processing

"does the bomber have a scary tone of ai. i dont want people to see me as a doomer" — analysis of how a rhetorical choice would be perceived by an audience, weighed against a reputational risk.
"the subtitle says four ordinary things, but the title list 3 things" — detection of an internal inconsistency across two parts of the document.
"this also not my originial thought... Also i want to make sure i do not step in goverment regulations" — evaluation of attribution obligations and scope boundaries in your own argument.

Level 3 — Applying/Output

The four original analogies you generated unprompted: the flowers-and-thank-you-note comparison, the Wright brothers compression argument, the dual-use aviation parallel, and the Aladdin/genie framing.
"the one thing i want this paper to lean heavier into is the role ai plays in education and how it relies on educators to teach these things, because busy parents or colleagues or supervisors do not have the time or expertise" — synthesis of a new central thesis and direction for revision.
"should we include this as part of the subtitle or as the hook" — application of structural and rhetorical judgment to your own draft.

3. Overall AI usage summary

You supplied the original ideas, the argumentative direction, the voice specification, and every substantive revision decision; the AI functioned as a drafting partner, research verifier (the 1903 New York Times editorial, the specification-gaming attribution), formatting engine, and editorial sounding board. The AI produced most of the prose in the finished document, but did so against analogies, a thesis, and a set of constraints that originated with you, and you rejected, redirected, or corrected the output at every stage. Rating: Substantial.

4. Positive feedback

You caught attribution problems in your own favor's direction rather than the AI's — twice flagging that an idea in the draft was not originally yours and asking for it to be properly credited, which is a higher standard of intellectual honesty than most drafting processes apply.
You iterated with clear purpose rather than accepting output passively, repeatedly narrowing scope ("i do not want to step in government regulations"), adjusting tone for a specific audience risk, and catching a factual-consistency error between the title and subtitle that had gone unnoticed.
You drove the conceptual work yourself, arriving independently at an analogy that turns out to appear in the AI safety literature, and then generating the essay's central thesis about the educator's role as a genuine addition rather than accepting the draft as complete.

This is a curated environment designed to help you navigate the intersection of policy and practice. Whether you are drafting institutional guidance or building classroom assignments, these resources—including the NCCCS AI Guidance Handbook and my TrAIT, AI Sandwich, and AI Scholar frameworks—are here to serve as your foundation.

I invite you to use the chat interface below to ask questions, brainstorm frameworks, or get started immediately on your own AI design projects.

Note: Users will need to log into their Google account before accessing the NotebookLM.

Try These Starter Prompts:

For Policy Design: "Act as a policy consultant. Based on the guardrails in the NCCCS Handbook, draft a 'Purpose Statement' and three specific policy guidelines for my department that balance AI innovation with academic integrity."
For Assignment Creation: "I want to redesign a writing assignment using the AI Sandwich method and the TrAIT Framework. How can I structure the 'Human-First' and 'Human-Last' steps to ensure students are still meeting the core learning objectives?"
For Classroom Transparency (TrAIT): "I am teaching a course that I want to designate as 'AI-Enhanced' under the TrAIT framework. Please analyze the framework's definition of 'AI+' and generate a syllabus policy that encourages students to use tools like ChatGPT for brainstorming and outlining, but strictly prohibits them for final drafting. How should I phrase this to ensure clarity?"
For Course Redesign for AI Scholars: "I want to upgrade my current course to produce 'AI Scholars.' Based on the framework, give me one example of a classroom activity for each stage of the progression: one that ensures Compliance, one that builds Literacy, and a capstone project that demonstrates Fluency."

Google Gemini Gems For Educators

AI Policy Guidance for Education Gem

Pre-AI Assignment to AI Converter Gem

AI Scholar Course Architect Gem

Remember: Think of these Google Gem as a specialized research assistant trained on our specific educational frameworks. It is designed to spark ideas, not dictate final decisions. We strongly encourage you to "push back"—ask follow-up questions, request different tones, or refine the details until it matches your needs.

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