Is AI Outsmarting Your Pedagogy? 5 Assignments for the AI Era

As a theology professor, summers often allow me to shift my focus away from my classes.

Not this summer.

Like many educators, I’ve known in the back of my mind I need to consider making changes in my assignments because of one thing: AI. If you are in a similar spot, keep reading.

I argued early on in the AI education revolution that AI could help not only educators, but theologians too. While it is right to attend to the important concerns of originality and plagiarism, theological educators must also address a more productive issue: Do our assignments actually assess what is important?

Put more bluntly: AI exposed our overreliance on writing papers as the default proof of learning. For many of us, it is difficult to imagine a theology class that is not heavily reliant on papers. But we must. More importantly, we should. Theology will be better for it. The church will be better for it.

Our current dilemma is a blessing in disguise.

Table of contents

Shift from product to performance

A paper can be a proxy for reading, interpretation, memory, judgment, and synthesis. But AI is now very good at producing that proxy. What is needed now is a shift from an end product, like a research essay, to a shared experience of theological insight and informed wisdom in real time. The answer to AI is not paperless theology education. It is “paper-plus” pedagogy.

Theology is meant to be announced, prayed, preached, sung, debated, embodied, and practiced. John Webster’s insight has helped many budding and experienced theologians understand the necessity of “theological theology”: The nature of theology requires a presuppositional recognition that shapes the process and purpose of the theological task. The time is ripe to extend Webster’s wisdom toward theological pedagogy.¹ The AI revolution is forcing theological education to reattach itself to its proper purpose: forming students who can receive, interpret, confess, teach, pray, and embody Christian truth for the sake of the church and the world.

As I prepare for the fall semester, I am not planning to eliminate writing. I am planning to make writing one part of a broader ecology of assignments. Theological educators must remember that the modern research paper became dominant with the rise of the research university. Before that, theological and humanistic education included recitation, disputation, memorization, commentary, translation, preaching, and public speech.² These are clues to the way back to the future.

5 types of assignments AI can’t do for students

Below are five categories to consider as you create theology assignments AI cannot write.

1. Memory

Have students in theology classes memorize and recite a Bible verse, creed, catechism, or theological paragraph. After this, they explain one phrase and one pastoral implication.

You can calibrate the length of the passage and the expected level of precision as you see fit, although I recommend you neither set the bar too high nor too low. I’ve been a part of groups who unintentionally shamed memorization mistakes; I’ve also seen it happen when the bar is so low that it lost all of its benefit and intent. Since recitation is a public event and it is unlikely that younger people are used to this sort of thing, I’d encourage erring on the side of grace as they get used to it.

AI can generate commentary, but it cannot put the text into the student’s memory. Assignments like this make theological education better because students learn not merely to retrieve Christian truth, but to carry it with them into prayer, teaching, counsel, worship, and witness.

2. Dialogue

These assignments involve students speaking during class. They are not reciting something they memorized (like above) but speaking extemporaneously and responsively.

First, assign a theological question in a disputed form. For example: “Should Christians describe salvation primarily as forgiveness, healing, liberation, union with Christ, or adoption?”

Next, have students prepare a “prep card” prior to class. A prep card is a one-page, or even half-page, set of notes they can use to support their claim, which is essentially a short speech. The card could include: a theological claim, a primary source or biblical text, one supporting reason, one objection, one distinction, one pastoral implication, and one question they still have. Then, during class, assign students one of six roles: a claim-giver, a biblical witness, a historical witness, an objector, a pastoral/practical assessor, and a summarizer.

Each person must speak for one minute. After they are done, the rest of the class can ask questions and add their own information. The professor contributes and concludes the assignment with feedback on the topic. For larger classes, you can break the class into multiple groups and provide different questions. For grading, you can collect students’ prep cards and note general feedback on their participation during class (above average, average, below average).

This isn’t a debate, though that is another option. Nonetheless, this assignment helps students engage a structured theological question piece by piece. You are creating an in-the-moment presentation in which each person has to listen to what the others are saying and weave in the information they have.

AI can draft talking points, but it cannot stand in the student’s place as she listens, responds, clarifies, concedes, distinguishes, and speaks with accountability before her peers. Assignments like this make theological education better by treating theology as a communal practice of attentive listening and truthful speech rather than merely an independently written product.

3. Interpretation

Another option requires no preparation for students; they do the work in class. The point is to make students encounter the text before they search for explanations of the text.

For example, open the class with a reading of Scripture, a creed, a historic confession, or an important passage from a theologian. First let them hear it. Then, hand out a hard copy and give them several minutes to notate it. You could prompt them to consider:

• the central claim,
• words or phrases that need clarification,
• what doctrine is being taught or assumed,
• what tension or question does this text address or raise, and
• what could be misunderstood in this passage.

Next, break them into groups to discuss and form questions and observations to pursue further.

All of this so far has been offline.

Then, give them time to use commentaries, Bible software, library databases, AI, or course materials, but only after they have first made their own observations. AI, then, becomes a conversation partner to evaluate, not a substitute for reading. Bible software, commentaries, and AI tools become more valuable when students first learn to notice what is actually in the text. The goal is not to prevent the use of AI but to put everything in its right place.

Finally, ask each group to report on their interpretation, questions, and analysis. Along the way the teacher can introduce relevant details to help the learning process.

For the last fifteen minutes of class, have each student write a summary of their interpretation and the process of discovery (what they noticed at first, then with their group, then using resources, and their conclusion) on the hard copy you handed out, perhaps on the back side of the paper. Their marked-up page becomes evidence of the interpretive process: notes, questions, revisions, arrows, corrections, and final summary. They then turn this document in for credit.

AI becomes a tool within the interpretive process rather than a substitute for it.

AI can identify themes, summarize interpretations, and suggest questions, but it cannot perform the student’s first act of attention to the text. Assignments like this make theological education better because students learn to observe before consulting outside resources, evaluate the interpretations they receive, and take responsibility for their own conclusions. AI becomes a tool within the interpretive process rather than a substitute for it.

4. Discernment

For these assignments, the professor gives students a realistic ministry scenario and asks them to respond in stages with theologically informed answers.

For example: “A student in your youth group says, ‘I don’t think God loves me because I keep having panic attacks.’ What do you say in the first two minutes? What do you not say? What theological claim matters most?”

After posing this scenario, have each student write on a piece of paper their initial pastoral response and their theological rationale. Then, have them write about any possible risks or misuses of doctrine related to the scenario. Next, have the student discuss their response with their neighbor. If helpful, combine pairs into larger groups before calling on several groups to share their responses.

Have students take a photo of their initial response before turning it in so they can compare their first instinct with their revised plan. Then, have them turn that in for part of their grade. Finally, tell them to turn in a one-page “plan of action” informed by two to three theological doctrines or sources before the next class. Provide students additional theological resources (perhaps denominational guidance, church care policies, relevant Scripture, assigned theologians, and mental health referral guidelines) to investigate further after class.

In this example, it is possible that the students could engage deeply with the theology of the love of God, creation and embodied creatureliness, human weakness and finitude, the doctrine of sin, and the ministry of the church. The point is not for students to find the perfect answer, but to practice theologically disciplined pastoral judgment: what to say, what not to say, which doctrine applies, and when additional care is needed.

AI can produce a polished pastoral response, but it cannot assume responsibility for discerning what this real-life person needs in this particular situation. Assignments like this make theological education better because students must practice the difficult work of weighing doctrines, anticipating harm, choosing words carefully, and recognizing the limits of their own competence. They are not merely demonstrating what they know; they are learning how to use theological knowledge wisely.

5. Embodiment

Assignments of embodied theology ask students to notice how doctrine takes shape in real communities, practices, prayers, sermons, songs, ministries, habits, websites, etc.

A classic example of this type of assignment will be familiar to many who have taught on ecclesiology: Have students visit a local church, research its beliefs, history, and location within the larger Christian community, meet with one of the pastors, and then write a report and present their findings to the class in a presentation. The basic idea is to look at a specific local example or artifact in the community.

Another way to do this is to conduct an in-class audit of a church’s theology. The professor could model this by passing out a paper copy of a publicly available church mission statement and a statement of faith, preferably a church not represented by students in the room or anonymized. Which doctrines are explicit? Which doctrines are assumed but unnamed? Which doctrines are missing? What biblical support is provided? What pastoral strengths and dangers do you notice? Next, ask students to look up a church they have attended or are familiar with and do the same thing. Hand out a form that they can fill out to do a theological audit and turn in at the end of class. Along the way you could encourage them to talk with a partner or have an open discussion with the entire class.

Another option is to ask students, toward the end of class, to write on a piece of paper a prayer or liturgy related to the doctrine that was presented. This could include a biblical phrase or image or a doctrinal claim. After a lecture on the Trinity, a student might write a prayer that actually prays to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, or otherwise reflects Trinitarian grammar. Have students turn it in for credit.

AI can describe a generic church or write a generic prayer, but it cannot replace the student’s act of observing a real community, discerning the theology embedded in its practices, or producing words to be prayed by actual people. Assignments like this make theological education better by reconnecting doctrine to worship, ministry, and the lived practices of the church.

AI may make us better teachers

None of these assignments are AI-proof in the absolute sense. Students can still misuse AI while preparing for them. But these assignments reduce the value of outsourcing because the central act of learning happens in memory, dialogue, interpretation, discernment, and embodiment.

The purpose of teaching theology is not merely producing papers or providing grades, but forming students who can interpret, pray, teach, listen, discern, and speak truthfully. The best assignments in the age of AI are not merely harder to cheat on; they are closer to the actual work of theology.

Share your thoughts

What are AI-proof theology assignments? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

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1. John Webster, T&T Clark Reader in John Webster, ed. Michael Allen (T&T Clark, 2020), 24–41.
2. See: Charles R. Foster et al., Educating Clergy: Teaching Practices and Pastoral Imagination (Jossey-Bass, 2006); David R. Russell, Writing in the Academic Disciplines: A Curricular History (SIU Press, 2002); Edward Farley, Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education (Fortress Press, 1983), 5, 19.