Artificial Intelligence (AI) for social sciences research and teaching

Day 1 – November 6

AI for teaching and academic practice
- AI, LLMs, chatbots, personalized assistants - how they work, their affordances and limits, and how to instruct them
- Generating materials such as exams and slides; student AI usage regulations and ethical questions
- Enhancing student experience, feedback and grading with AI; discussion on the (near) future role of the educator

Day 2 – November 7

AI for research
- AI as research assistant; enhancing and automating literature review; tools for search and summarization
- Writing and data visualization with AI; producing papers, applications and assessing them
- Machine-assisted quantitizing research designs; automating data annotation and analysis

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping how sociologists conduct research and engage in teaching. This workshop is designed for faculty, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students who want to exploit AI tools to enhance their academic work.
The session will focus on effective prompt engineering to optimize Google Gemini for research tasks such as literature reviews and data analysis. We will explore how AI can be applied to key sociological research areas and the sessions will cover both theoretical considerations and hands-on applications. Moreover, we will also explore how AI can support teaching, from developing course materials to fostering interactive learning experiences.
Participants will gain hands-on experience with prompt optimization and leave with practical strategies for integrating AI into both research and teaching.

Interested participants may choose to attend only the teaching session, only the research session, or both