How I Plan to Use AI in the Classroom This Fall
The summer recess has only just begun. Before taking their much-needed break, professors are beginning to plan for their fall courses, and this year is shaping up to be a real challenge. One issue that is being hotly debated and discussed is how professors should manage artificial intelligence (AI).
While some professors are considering banning the use of AI, others have accepted that there is nothing that can be done to halt the use of AI in their students’ work and will try to grade accordingly. Many faculty are trying to adapt and are using various generative AI tools to help students teach and learn, as others are using tools like ChatGPT in their teaching and grading to mixed and controversial results.
The reality is that AI is still in its infancy and is becoming ubiquitous. AI is rapidly evolving and improving upon itself daily, and this technology will radically alter almost all facets of our lives, and certainly the classroom. The transformational tool of AI will unquestionably change how teachers think, engage, and try to educate students, but we all have no real idea about how quite yet. By this time next year, if I had to predict anything, it is likely that all college students will be working with some form of direct AI tutor to supplement classes, and this will be possibly a ground-altering option for learning and mastery of material.
As AI comes to the classroom, here is how I plan to manage the AI revolution with my students this fall.
First, I intend to be direct and open with my students about the realities of the world and technology; I cannot stop AI, and I don’t really want to, as its benefits will be remarkable in countless areas of life. However, I will also emphasize that we must remember that AI can do quite a bit of harm as well as good in the educational space, and our thinking and teaching with AI must adapt accordingly. As such, I will make it clear that I cannot police its use or effectively “catch” students using AI. Generative AI models are so advanced, and students are using multiple AI platforms and tools to have projects and papers completed and altered to avoid detection.
Second, I will ask that my students try to limit using AI in terms of doing the readings for the class and their written work. While I recognize that AI is already a part of so much post-graduate life and the real world, I will stress that our time together is not the real world quite yet and the moment in their lives where they are spending both time and money – real opportunity costs – to learn and develop their minds and their skills, which will occur by doing the reading, writing, analysis, and content creation.
While students can effectively “cheat” or figure out workarounds to do the work, doing so is to waste their collegiate experience. As a professor, it is my job to help students learn how to think, argue, manage evidence and data, write, navigate differences, and find truths – if they are just looking for an easy out and grade, they would be better off spending time with another professor and class. Since my two courses this fall are in seminars, and I will have the chance to see them regularly and connect with each student personally, I hope that they will put down ChatGPT and do the work so that I can help all of them develop and grow both intellectually and professionally.
Third, my coursework will involve doing exercises and activities that are effectively offline and will force students to think about readings, ideas, and data without the aid of AI. My intention is not to be unreasonably challenging or out of touch, but there will be several evaluative pieces of work that will be done in class, free of any tech and digital distractions. Students will have to make presentations about the various readings and will be asked to debate particular topics face-to-face with each other; I will also ask probing questions, and the students won’t have ChatGPT in front of them. Instead, my students will need to be ready to talk extemporaneously, know the various ideas and theories sufficiently well, and think on their feet. They will still have to connect in real-time and in real space with their peers and listen and react to them. This should incentivize students to engage deeply and thoughtfully with the material, even if they use AI to prepare beforehand.
As a part of this third point, I plan on bringing back short essay writing exercises to the seminars, and the final exam will be in blue books and with pencils and paper. I will allow students to bring in hard-copy notes that they can prepare in advance, but will not provide them with question prompts or allow any digital devices when they are doing this work. I anticipate that some students will walk away from taking my seminars because of these expectations, but I have a moment to help students learn how to think and how to write, and I intend to make the most of that moment before AI does so much of the heavy lifting for them, and they never develop the ability to do analytical and expressive work.
My goal with so much offline work is not to cause unnecessary stress for students or oppose the benefits of AI. I am sure that I will have to directly integrate AI into my teaching in short order, but for now, I am going to hold off this upcoming term and hope that they actually appreciate, to some degree, my pedagogical growth goals for them.
What I want to make clear to my students as of this fall is that liberal arts, collegiate-level education is about learning how to think and how to communicate effectively, and students need to put in the effort to develop those skills before becoming too dependent on AI and such skills atrophy. I am completely confident that AI advances will undeniably compel me to change my seminars to incorporate applications within a year, but I will let the tech evolve a bit more and see how higher education evolves. For now, I will share with my students that we are going to focus on some “old school” learning methods because there is no downside to mastering critical reading and writing and learning how to blend ideas, data, and reason. I suspect that more than a few students will join me for this last AI-free ride.
