Educational Pathways for AI-Empowered General Education: A Case Study of "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence"

General education-a critical arena for cultivating interdisciplinary and innovative talents in higher education-faces structural dilemmas such as outdated content, undiversified pathways, and disconnection from industry demands. Taking tourism colleges as the empirical setting, this study draws on the theories of competency-based education (CBE) and outcome-based education (OBE) to explore educational pathways for AI-empowered general education courses. A three-tier progressive competency map spanning cognition, application, and creation was constructed; a modular curriculum system driven by the dual engines of OBE and project-based learning (PBL) was designed; and a spiral action research mechanism was introduced for empirical validation in teaching practice. Empirical results demonstrate that the proposed pathway effectively addresses such challenges as the lack of vehicles for cultivating AI literacy among non-computer-science students and the mismatch between curriculum provision and industry demands, thereby achieving a value leap of general education from "inward talent cultivation" to "outward empowerment." The closed-loop paradigm of "demand insight–curriculum reconstruction–practical validation–outcome transformation" proposed in this study offers a replicable model for the digital-intelligent reform of general education in application-oriented universities.