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Teaching with AI Assistants

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06-01-2025 08:13 AM
GeriMiller
by Esri Regular Contributor
Esri Regular Contributor
1 0 3,356
‎06-01-2025 08:13 AM

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Purpose of Blog

AI has had profound impact on how we do our work. This blog aims at elaborating on how we get started with Teaching with AI Assistants in GIS – where do we incorporate in curriculum, what the resources are, as well as possible limitations.

It is a series of 4 blogs:

Teaching/How do I get started

  • Educational approaches and objectives vary – please review the resources listed within these blog series to get ideas of what could be applicable to you.
  • Think about how to prioritize topics or infuse existing content with AI examples – you could be faced with a scenario of “too much content/what to give away” in a course, or better yet, consider how existing topics/concepts could enhanced/infused with AI Assistant approaches.  
  • Think about prerequisites/foundational knowledge - it is very important for students to understand those foundational concepts before using AI Assistant tools. This is very much course-objective dependent, but consider prerequisites ahead of time, before modifying any materials.
    • Should students have basic knowledge of GIS/Remote Sensing analytics and technologies (e.g. data visualization, overlay, visual interpretation)?
    • Should students have Programming skills? 
    • Should students have Statistics skills?

 Items to keep in mind

  • Ensure students understand limitations of using AI in learning - importance of developing a healthy critical view of data and outputs produced with AI tools. 
  • Think about what kinds of analyses make sense to offload to a bot, and which will require a lot more human interaction? Should we be driving complex, subjective analysis using bots? Probably not.  In other words, think about what types of problems are appealing/could be solved with AI Assistants?
  • Is it effective? There is a general concern by some of whether students are really learning with AI. Evaluate this for your own scenario/student learning.

AI Assistants Technology/Options

Note that the Esri AI Assistants leverage generative AI and large language models to help you with specific tasks, like search or mapping or survey design. And they are often embedded directly within the ArcGIS apps you’re already using. This allows us to focus on the experience of using assistants within ArcGIS to deliver concrete value.

Please be aware that the AI Assistants in ArcGIS are all in different stages of development. Some are already available for ArcGIS Early Adopters. Others are in the early development phase.

  • ArcGIS Assistants must be enabled in ArcGIS Online – this is an ArcGIS Online organization setting. For now, once enabled, the capability will apply to everyone – it cannot be granted to individual users in the ArcGIS Online Organization. For more information, check here.
  • AI Assistant in ArcGIS Pro (Beta) – the most obvious place for us to leverage generative AI is through ArcGIS doc assistants. Over the years Esri has written detailed documentation about ArcGIS functionality and about foundational GIS concepts and best practices. ArcGIS doc assistants will give you a new, more effective way to explore this information through a chatbot-like experience.
    • ArcGIS Doc assistant for ArcGIS Pro is currently available in Beta.
    • A separate installation is required.
    • More information here.
  • AI Assistants in ArcGIS currently in beta - below are the various options. Join the Esri Early Adopter Program to learn more and provide feedback.

Note: AI Assistants in ArcGIS are not supported in ArcGIS for Student Use, ArcGIS for Personal Use or ArcGIS Public accounts.

Governance, Compliance, Ethics

Check your institutional policies and resources as there is a lot of variation and guidance on using AI, which vary by institution.

  • Check your institutional AI resources (if any exist) – some institutions offer the below.
    • AI Guidance, Approved AI Tools, and AI Training
    • AI project checklist to gather information about AI projects
    • AI-related external workshops and webinar links
    • AI Learning Community space to share, learn, and discuss teaching with AI lessons learned, challenges, and solutions.
  • Provide action items and safeguards for students (example items below).
    • Sample Syllabus disclaimers, outlining user responsibility, ethical use, data security and privacy, potential risks, support. Again, those vary institution by institution.
  • IT Risks Assessment Processes (checklists, procedures) – also vary by institution.
    • Department or institution level guidelines.
    • Some institutions employ policies that everyone must undergo, or undergo if certain conditions are met, such as access to institutions systems, logins/authentication, physical hosting of data on institutional IT systems, etc.)

Resources, where to go for help

Feel free to refer to previous blogs in the series:

There are a lot of resources that can be used to get started. Please take a look at the below, and comment on what else could be helpful.

If you need to speak to a person, please reach out:

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