#AI4M: AI and College Teaching
I think most (all?) of us are still trying to figure out how we need to change our courses to account for the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. What do we teach our students about it? To what extent do we allow students to use AI in their work? Can we detect it in their work when they use it? I wish I had answers to these questions and others, but I do not. I do try to listen to what others are saying and writing about the topic. Here are a few that have caught my attention.
A Big Picture Overview from a National News Outlet
The video below is a 10-minute PBS NewsHour segment titled, “How artificial intelligence is reshaping college for students and professors.” This is a story that shows how a few students, professors, colleges, and universities are dealing with the AI challenge.
ChatGPT Targets Universities and Their Students
OpenAI is rolling out an aggressive plan to make ChatGPT part of the basic infrastructure of higher education, pitching what it calls “AI-native universities” where every student gets a personal AI assistant for tutoring, studying, career prep, and more, starting with massive systems like the 460,000-student California State University network. The New York Times reports that OpenAI is selling premium campus versions of ChatGPT to universities while also marketing free versions directly to students, setting off an AI arms race with Google and Microsoft to lock in young users as lifelong customers. While faculty are already building custom course bots and students are using ChatGPT as a study partner, early research shows real risks, including factual errors, weakened critical-thinking skills, and privacy concerns tied to long-term data tracking. The article frames this push as a national experiment in how much of college learning should be handed to machines—and who ultimately controls that learning relationship.
Teaching with AI: Protect Your Teaching Expertise
In Harvard Business School’s Inspiring Minds Cheryl Strauss Einhorn argues that while AI can be a powerful teaching assistant, it should never replace the human judgment that defines great education. Using five guiding principles—protecting your authority, purpose, accountability, truth, and expertise—she shows how faculty can use AI for speed and structure without surrendering control of their courses to generic, pattern-based outputs. From designing syllabi to summarizing student feedback and selecting readings, Einhorn stresses that educators must set the goals, verify the facts, and apply the deep context that only they possess. The result is a practical framework for using AI as a helpful sketchpad rather than letting it become the architect of learning.
Teaching with AI: Make Your Classroom More Human
In a recent New York Times piece, Boston College professor Carlo Rotella argues that easy access to tools like ChatGPT has not destroyed college learning but has instead pushed good teachers to make their classes more human, not more high-tech: by shifting toward in-class discussion, pen-and-paper exams, close reading, and step-by-step writing processes that show how thinking happens, professors are helping students build the skills A.I. cannot replace—such as critical thinking, interpretation, and meaningful dialogue with others—so the classroom becomes less about turning in polished products and more about practicing the mental “muscles” needed for real-world sense-making in an A.I.-saturated world.
Note: A first draft of these summaries was generated by ChatGPT.