For English professor Dan Cryer, using generative artificial intelligence to write a college essay is like bringing a forklift to the gym.
“If all we needed to do was move the weights, then it would be great,” says Cryer, who teaches at Johnson County Community College, on the outskirts of Kansas City, Kansas.
“But we need to develop the muscles, and students going through the writing process are developing those muscles.”
Cryer says AI has also added a new type of work for teachers like him: trying to determine if a student’s work is really theirs. He says the problem is exacerbated by the fact that his community college, like many other higher education institutions in the US, provides students with access to AI tools.
He says the arrival of these tools has created a new burden for students too: finding the line between responsible and irresponsible use of AI.
“It’s not fair to them,” says Cryer.
More than three years after the debut of ChatGPT, generative AI has become part of everyday life, and professors and students are still figuring out how or if they should use it, especially in humanities courses.
A recent survey suggests many students are diving in headfirst: According to a survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab conducted in July last year, about 85% of undergraduates used AI for academic tasks, including generating ideas, outlining papers, and studying for exams. About 19% of students also reported using AI to write complete essays.
More than half of the students who used AI for academic tasks had mixed feelings about it, reporting that it helps them sometimes but can also make them think less deeply.
Aysa Tarana, a recent college graduate, was in her first year at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities when ChatGPT was launched. She says she started using the chatbot for small tasks, like suggestions for research topics.
But Tarana says she eventually stopped using AI because it made her feel like she was “outsourcing my thinking, and that felt really weird.”
That’s exactly what worries Cryer.
After spending a sabbatical studying generative AI, he reached his own conclusion: Cryer believes educators should use AI tools as little as possible in their teaching.
“It seems to be one of the main purposes of these tools is to prevent you from thinking as intensely,” he says.
Cryer says he now devotes more time to convincing his students of the value of striving to become better writers. He tells them that the goal of their education is the process, not the product—because society doesn’t need more college essays. “What we need is for students to go through the process of writing research papers so they can become better thinkers, so they can construct a coherent argument, so they can differentiate a good source from a bad one,” says Cryer.
And if students rely on AI to do the work for them, says Cryer, it could end up robbing them of the education they enrolled in.
A professor who sees value in generative AI
In Charlotte, N.C., Leslie Clement says she has come to see generative AI as a powerful collaborator that can enhance student learning.
“We encourage [students] to use it because we know they will use it, but responsibly,” says Clement, professor of English, Spanish, and African studies at the historically Black Johnson C. Smith University.
Clement says she allows students to use AI to create outlines for their papers, get feedback on ideas, and compare different sources of information.
Clement also co-created a course called “African Diaspora and AI” that examines how AI impacts people of global African descent, including the dangerous mining of cobalt, a crucial component in AI technologies, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The course also addresses potential future benefits of AI, as well as contributions from Black researchers and scientists.
Source: npr.org