Michael Horn argues colleges can't ban AI, so they should redesign assignments to let students use it on bigger projects. He and Jeff propose institution-wide courses on responsible AI use and redefining what counts as cheating, since ChatGPT use spikes during term time and undermines learning.
It's the cheating epidemic driven by AI. Jeff, Everyone is saying students everywhere, the impact of AI on student learning to allow them not to learn. They're using it to manufacture papers, to come up with assignments, to hack problem sets, the use of ChatGPT spikes whenever college is in session. It's going to probably pull back a little bit over the summer. AI is having a real impact on student learning. But to me, the real story, frankly, Jeff, is that we. We need to rethink, I think, what we're asking of students so that it makes use of AI, so that they're rowing with it as opposed to seeing it as something that they're not allowed to touch and that it's undermining student learning. That's a losing battle, in my mind. We really need to rethink how are you using AI to do more in your learning, to do a bigger project, to do, deliver something that, you know, puts a real impact in the field in some way and will set you up for career success? I think that's a very different fram, a very different rethink of the syllabi and assignments that we're asking of students.
And Michael, what I would have us do starting in the fall is rethink the beginning of college for every student, particularly new students. Design a course around kind of responsible use of AI, get have it crowdsourced by how our students using it, how are faculty using it, and really look at how do we add the critical thinking skills of both our faculty and our students to what AI can do. What can AI do better? What is cheating with AI? I think that it's, in some cases it's not a stark line. I think in some cases it is, but I think in other cases it's like, well, AI helped me do that. Is that cheating necessarily? I think we need to really help introduce students to this at the beginning of the year. And I think every college should basically start the first couple of weeks and focus just on AI in. Within the discipline, within the courses, but at an institutional level as well. That's what I would do if I were a provost or a president at a college starting this fall.
