AI in Education: A College Academic Advisor's Thoughts
How do we approach AI in the world of education?
For the last few months, you might know I’ve been exploring the seven guidelines for church leadership in an AI-driven world in considerable detail for a book I’m writing. I’m on the last chapter, buried in research, and with lots of work to do.
It’s coming, though.
This week, I felt it would be good to share some brief thoughts on the trajectory of education in light of artificial intelligence. When I’m not serving as the lead elder at Trinity, I’m an academic advisor at Okanagan Bible College, and the rise of AI is something we’ve discussed to varying degrees as a staff team in the last year.
Here are a few opinions (for what it’s worth):
Trying to plagiarism check for AI-written content seems to be a fool’s errand. Ultimately, it is too easy for a student to ask a large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT to write something for them and disguise it in their own words. If done with any modicum of skill, the line between the two is so blurry that it becomes almost impossible to discern AI’s work from the student’s. Good luck, markers.
Should we limit students from using AI? If so, to what extent? It’s like asking whether we should completely ban students from using Google for their research or a calculator for any mathematical exercises whatsoever. These are valuable tools in the proper context. LLMs can be, too, as long as the student is developing the appropriate skills and knowledge base required to be a benefit to society.
I believe that we’ll see a rise in exam-based competency tests over written assignments in response to point 1. At this point, AI can’t sneak into the exam hall, so the student will have to depend on their abilities.
However, I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, faculty can guarantee competence in the student, which is important. On the other, to what extent is rote memory helpful in a world where AI makes knowledge instantaneous and interactive? Or, in this post-truth world we inhabit, is it more helpful to develop the skills to produce logical, coherent answers irrespective of the tools available and the means of getting there…so long as the student maintains academic rigour and integrity to the best of their ability?
And even if they can’t maintain academic rigour and integrity, at least they could join the leadership team at Harvard, right?
(Too soon? Maybe.)One approach I’ve taken with the students under my care is to simply say, “You can absolutely get AI to write your papers for you if you choose. I probably won’t be able to tell. But,
a) If I can, that’s a big problem for you. I do not look kindly on deliberate plagiarism.
b) You are wasting your time and money on a massive missed opportunity to build a skill set that will make you valuable to the world. The piece of paper you get for your degree may look nice, but it is essentially worthless if you don’t have the appropriate knowledge and abilities to accompany it.
c) You will eventually get found out in the real world. The gaps in your understanding where you let AI do all the heavy lifting will not prepare you for the work you are hoping to do, and that’s a scary place to be! You are seriously hurting your chances of long-term employability. Why not make the most of your time to prepare for what’s ahead?
d) Do you want to be the type of person who passes off another’s work as your own (in this case, AI’s)?
Of course, this is not a foolproof response, but it seems to have helped so far. Then again, I’m in the field of biblical studies, so we might hope that overall levels of integrity are higher than the average discipline!
To be clear, these are by no means exhaustive opinions on education and AI - just some of the thoughts percolating in my brain at the moment. I’ve written a little more about the topic here, and I’ll no doubt explore the topic in more detail in the future.
What are your thoughts? Does anything above resonate? If not, why not? Have I missed anything? Let me know what you think!
See you in a week or two (or possibly three) as I finish up a chapter on the last guideline for church leaders in an AI-driven world: keeping an undistracted focus on the mission of the Church.
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