As colleges and universities begin a new school year, many are grappling with how to implement and regulate the use of artificial intelligence.
Sam Hawke is days away from teaching his first statistic classes at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. In fact, it’ll be his first time teaching anywhere as a full-fledged professor.
“Sort of what I’m thinking about doing is designing a policy with my students where on the first day of class I will give each of them a pad of post-it notes and display a question on a slide that says ‘is artificial intelligence appropriate to use in this class.’ And then I’ll give them 8 minutes and in those 8 minutes I will expect them to write like 15 questions,” said Hawke.
With the explosive growth in use of AI models like ChatGPT, Hawke has been busy preparing a collaborative approach.
“And so, by the end of that class the goal would be to have an idea of what questions we should answer in determining what that policy should be and then by the second class hopefully we will all have thought about it, and we can think about it more, but the goal will be to try and answer some of those questions and hopefully that will be helpful in determining what the AI policy should be,” said Hawke.
He says because AI is so prevalent, he believes it’s important to work with students to determine what role the technology should play in his classrooms.
“so, I don’t have a policy yet, I sort of lean more towards, ‘yeah, the students will have access to this tool so they should gain familiarity with it but I definitely don’t want that to replace learning,” said Hawke. “I don’t want it to just be like I give the students the work, they type it into the AI, they hand it back to me and then I type their work into the AI and say, ‘grade this for me.’ Because then what’s happening?”
American Studies Professor Beck Krefting is the director of Skidmore’s Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning and runs a new faculty orientation program. She says Hawke’s approach is encouraging.
“Having those clear boundaries and a shared understanding of how to use AI is going to actually help to prevent the misuse of AI throughout the rest of the year from students. And they’re hungry for clarity and transparency on how they’re going to use it. They don’t want to misuse it. Most of them are not trying to use them for nefarious ends but they, without any instruction or guidance, could easily do so without meaning to do so,” said Krefting.
Krefting emphasizes that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to AI in the classroom – Skidmore faculty and staff are working to adopt the new technology for various learning environments.
“Well, it’s really important that we don’t infringe on academic freedom. So, even as I make space for training and increased literacy, I want to be clear it is not something we are trying to impose on faculty or staff. It’s kind of like, this is here and we want you to understand it and we want you to make informed decisions about how you use it or if you use it at all or the degree to which you use it,” said Krefting.
There are, however, some professors who are not as accepting of AI.
“I do think, we all teach at Skidmore College undergraduates. And those are students of a certain age. So, I do believe AI can play a role for graduate students or professional scholars. But there’s a developmental or staging argument that makes me think that AI should play no role in the classroom,” Barbara Black.
English Professor Barbara Black is restructuring her classes this year – no grading rubrics, since students can simply plug them into large language models like Chat GPT, more oral exams and an emphasis on in-class participation.
“I’m making sure, particularly in my Composition class, that we read about AI and its relationship to writing. I want my students not to be AI fluent but AI literate. And what I mean by that distinction is that Chat GPT can take away their agency, it can take away their voice, it can rob them of their opportunity to develop something I don’t think we talk a lot about, rob them of their opportunity of taste,” said Black. “Developing a sense of their taste. Who are the more important scholars, who are the scholars who speak to them? Who are the authors who speak to them?”
