AI in the classroom
How some Pennsylvania professors are using it, and why others aren’t
Penn State University professor Matt Jordan recently started incorporating artificial intelligence into his Media Democracy class.
Mr. Jordan, head of the department of film, production and media studies, wanted to include more writing in his course, but with 300 students, it was challenging to provide them with individualized feedback. So, he found an AI platform that could do that.
But it was immediately clear to Mr. Jordan that most of his students used ChatGPT, an AI system that can respond to prompts in readable text based on an expansive internet database, before submitting their work.
“This platform [was] supposed to help them clarify their thinking, [but the writing] is already polished because they dropped it into ChatGPT,” he said.
The chatbot was launched in November 2022 and can compose emails and write poems and essays. Its launch has been rife with plagiarism accusations against higher education students.
Now, as debates ensue between professors at Pennsylvania’s largest university about how and if the new technology should be used in the classroom, Mr. Jordan said he’s one of the faculty members pushing against it.
“It’s a challenge for us in academia to manage a world where students are pulled into being users of a product in a way that builds dependency,” he said.
Across Pennsylvania, higher education institutions are grappling with how to include AI in the classroom. Some have wholeheartedly embraced the technology, such as the University of Pennsylvania, which recently became the first university nationwide to offer an AI degree. Others like Penn State and Duquesne University leave it to the professors’ discretion.
A recent report from Tyton Partners found that nearly half of higher education students are regular users of generative AI, but less than a quarter of faculty members use it. The study was conducted between March and September last year and polled more than 1,000 faculty members and 1,600 college students.
The report notes that while many professors and faculty members have incorporated AI into their coursework, they are “significantly lagging” behind students in their use of the technology.
Many have yet to establish class policies related to AI.
“Over the years, we’ve used a lot of AI tools, including things like spell-check, autocorrect, autocomplete on your phone, which completes your sentences,” said Shyam Sundar, a Penn State professor and the director at the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Penn State.
The center was launched in April 2020 to study and promote socially responsible ways of building, deploying and using AI technology.
“But ChatGPT showed us that it can also generate content in a way that seems as good as human-generated content.”
Mr. Sundar said the latter raises questions in the public consciousness about the ethics of using AI. But a growing number of college educators put that aside — only 39% of faculty surveyed in the Tyton study felt GenAI would hurt student learning; an 11% decrease since a survey conducted last spring.
Paige Beal, a professor in sports, arts, entertainment and music business at Point Park University, thinks AI is essential for students to learn. She sees it as an opportunity for her marketing students to “think differently.”
Before implementing AI usage in her marketing class, Ms. Beal attended several regional education conferences to “wrap her head” around AI. At those meetings, she learned how AI can lend itself to plagiarism — particularly in writing courses.
But that’s not a problem she’s dealt with in her marketing class, where fewer than 20 students are enrolled.
In the course, students use generative AI to create business marketing plans. ChatGPT is a tool Ms. Beal encourages her students to use to research demographics and trends for their clients.
“[AI] seems to turn a light on for those that struggle with content creation,” she
said.
Ms. Beal admits she’s “in fear” of AI potentially eliminating jobs in the workforce. Still, she wants her students to have the advantage of being at the forefront of new technologies.
“That’s the world they’re going to be stepping into,” she said.
At the conferences she attended, Ms. Beal noticed universities in the region have been approaching AI differently.
“It’s going to be an ongoing conversation [in education] about how we handle it,” she said.
And that conversation is alive in the Steel City, as several universities have been creditedfor being at the forefront of AI usage.
In early February, Duquesne’s Grefenstette Center for Ethics in Science, Technology, and Law announced its involvement in the inaugural U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium.
Established by the Biden administration, the association brings together more than 200 AI creators, academics, researchers and civil society to support the development and deployment of trustworthy AI.
“The launch of the USAISI is an important next step for ensuring a safe, secure, and just digital future,” said John Slattery, the center’s director. “[The center] has been a leading voice in empowering and educating communities to understand and act upon the ethical intersections of technology in the modern world.”
The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University are also joining the consortium. CMU has been revered as a pioneer of artificial intelligence and ranked by several organizations — including U.S. Newsand World Report — as the top undergraduateAI program nationwide.
“To maximize AI’s potential, we need multidisciplinary research and innovation to make AI safe, trustworthy and reliable,” Ramayya Krishnan, dean and faculty director of the Block Center for Technology and Society at CMU, said in a news release. Mr. Krishnan is also a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee.
“The consortium housed in the AI Safety Institute provides the platform for these conversations and will be an important resource for researchers and practitioners alike to advance safe AI.”
And it appears AI is being used by universities beyond the classroom.
A recent survey from Intelligent, an online publication that covers higher education, showed that approximately half of admissions departments use AI, and is expected to rise to 82% within the year.
“Duquesne uses AI to help organize our communications, particularly to help customize responses and provide curated materials that are personalized and aligned to studentsrelative to their interests and where they are in the [admissions] process,” said Joel Braun, senior vice president for enrollment management. “We ensure they get the rightinformation at the right time.”
At universities, Mr. Sundar of Penn State said the technology can also lend itself toadministration duties and marketing.
“It’s going to be in every part of university functioning,” he said.
AI’s role in the classroom is “the 40 million dollar question,” Annette Vee, a Pitt professor and the director of the university’s composition program, said. Ms. Vee has authored research and implemented policies on AI-based text generators for the university.
She acknowledged that while students could use AI to shortcut learning, barring them from it will shortcut a different learning opportunity — using AI in a safe space.
“[Students] should explore this in a place where they can have conversations about the ethics of it, where the data comes from, what this means for thinking and communication and authenticity and authorship,” she said.