assignments where AI genuinely can’t help: should teachers be designing more of them? I’m redesigning my curriculum and want to build in assessment types that naturally resist AI shortcutting, not by banning AI but by making it irrelevant.
anything requiring personal experience is the clearest category. AI can fabricate experience but it can’t draw on actual lived specifics in the way human writing does. assignments that require ‘describe a time when you personally’ or ‘reflect on how your background shapes your reading of’ produce material AI can’t generate authentically.
process documentation is another strong one. requiring students to submit drafts, revision notes, and a written account of their editing decisions makes the thinking visible in a way that can’t be faked. AI can write the final product but it can’t document a thinking process it didn’t have.
anything that requires an opinion the student has defended before. in-class discussion, a position paper that’s an extension of something argued verbally, a response to something said in class last week. the continuity requirement is the hard part for AI.
ngl the assignments where i’m most tempted to use AI are the ones where the topic has nothing to do with anything i care about. the assignments where i don’t think about AI at all are the ones where i’m writing about something i know from my own life. teachers who build in personal connection make the shortcut less appealing.
synthesizing from the replies and my own curriculum work:
AI-resistant assignment types:
- personal reflection with specific examples (AI fabricates, doesn’t recall)
- process documentation (drafts + revision notes + rationale for changes)
- in-class timed writing with continuity to outside work
- oral defense of written work
- response to a specific class discussion that happened in the room
- local or community-specific research (AI has no access to hyperlocal data)
- creative work that references the student’s specific context
the common thread: specificity of experience or continuity of relationship. AI can produce general, plausible content efficiently. it can’t produce content that only you could have written, about things only you experienced, in conversation with people you know.