The Innovation in AI Teaching Award recognizes UGA faculty whose exceptional contributions to the integration of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning have had a profound impact on a course, program, the university, or the larger academic community. This award, presented by the Office of Instruction, aims to celebrate outstanding faculty who have demonstrated creativity and innovation in leveraging AI technologies to enhance student learning outcomes and academic success.
Bree Bang-Jensen
Assistant Professor
School of Public and International Affairs
College of Public Health
Bree Bang-Jensen received this year’s Innovation in AI Teaching Award for an assignment she designed for INTL 4210: International Law.
The two-part assignment transformed how students learn treaty drafting by strategically integrating generative AI tools grounded in documented professional trends: text reuse in treaty drafting (Arias 2023), legislative borrowing (Wilkerson et al. 2015) and AI adoption in legal practice (Couture 2025).
Student groups first drafted two- to four-page treaties addressing contemporary transnational issues such as cybersecurity, climate change or pandemic preparedness. This part of the assignment explicitly encouraged AI use. Students fed relevant sample treaties into a Large Language Model chat client to help it learn style and clause structure, then edited AI outputs for accuracy and consistency. Students were required to provide PDFs and screenshots of their initial AI prompts and subsequent feedback, creating transparency about the process. The draft treaties included a justification memo explaining their choices.
In the second part of the assignment, students independently wrote a ratification memo from a specific nation-state perspective, explaining which treaties they would join and why, using evidence from news articles, government statements and scholarly sources. AI tools were explicitly prohibited in this section, ensuring individual analytical accountability.
The assignment developed critical AI literacy by teaching students to use AI as a tool requiring expert oversight rather than a replacement for judgment. Students learned effective prompting strategies, how to evaluate AI-generated legal language and when human revision is essential.
By requiring students to explain and defend choices about obligation, precision, delegation and flexibility, the assignment also developed legal reasoning skills that extended beyond technical drafting.
“This assignment is a terrific example of AI-resilient assessment,” said Meg Mittelstadt, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. “It incorporates generative AI in meaningful, disciplinary-appropriate ways that support students’ critical thinking, creativity and authentic engagement with real-world tasks.”