If you've been through the Essential Skills trainings, you already know TILT. You take an assignment you already give and make three things clear to students: why they're doing it (Purpose), what to do (Tasks), and what good work looks like (Criteria). The research behind TILT found that when instructors made those three things clear, students reported more confidence and a stronger sense of belonging, and the gains were largest for first-generation and underserved students. That describes a lot of our students.

AI has become one of the things students have to guess about. When an assignment doesn't say anything about AI, some students avoid it even when it would have been fine. Others use it in ways that skip the learning. Many don't mention it either way, because they aren't sure whether they're allowed to. TILT is a good fit for this problem because it was built to bring unwritten expectations into the open.

On the Essential Skills sheet, you named a target skill. Here you name a target BE behavior and write it into each of the three parts. Pick one behavior for one assignment. CPE's TILT trainings make the same point about the Essential Skills: focus each assignment on one skill so students learn it deeply.

Purpose: say what AI does to the learning

Your Purpose probably already says what the assignment builds. Add a sentence or two on how AI affects that. If AI can help with part of the work, say which part and why the rest stays with the student. If the assignment is No AI, say why. When the difficulty is the point, tell students so. They handle a hard assignment better when they know the struggle is part of the design. Otherwise, many assume they're doing it wrong.

Tasks: write the decision point as a step

Most assignments have a moment where a student decides whether or how to use AI: before they start drafting, when they're stuck, when they check their work. That's the decision point. Write it into the Tasks as a step of its own, so the choice is out in the open. Then give the path for students who don't use AI, so every student has something clear to do at that step. If there's a common misstep, name it too, like pasting in AI output without checking it.

Criteria: name the evidence

Say what good judgment looks like at that decision point, and what the student turns in to show it. Keep it small: a two-sentence note, a marked-up claim, a line in the submission comments. That small piece of evidence is what you'll use for checkpoints in the next exercise.

Matching the behavior to the decision point

The decision point usually tells you which behavior to target.

• BE Safe: the step is about what goes into the tool, or whether the tool is the right one for the job.
• BE Honest: the step is about telling you how AI was used.
• BE Critical: the step is about checking what AI produced before using it.
• BE Responsible: the step is about deciding whether AI fits this task at all.
• BE Reflective: the step is about looking back at how the choice affected their learning.

An example

A patient education handout in an allied health course. AI use label: AI-supported. Target behavior: BE Critical.

Purpose (added): "You'll explain a health condition in plain language, which is something you'll do with patients on the job. You can use AI to help with a first draft, but what matters here is whether the information is accurate and right for your patient. Checking it is the part of this assignment you'll use most in practice."

Task step: "Once your draft is done, check every health claim against the textbook or another approved source. If you used AI, mark one thing you changed or removed and explain why. If you didn't use AI, mark one claim you double-checked and where you checked it."

Criteria: "Every health claim matches the course text or an approved source. Your checking note names a specific claim and what you did with it."

A few tips

• Start with an assignment you labeled in Exercise 1. The label you chose there is the starting point for your Purpose.
• Name the behavior in your Purpose, then come back to it in the Task step and the Criteria. If it only appears once at the top, students lose track of it.
• Put the change in the assignment instructions in Blackboard, where students actually look.
• The non-use path should be a real task. It shouldn't read like a penalty or an afterthought.
• Read your revision as a student would. If they'd still have to guess about AI, add a sentence.