How to Talk to Faculty about AI without Starting World War III
So many of our conversations around AI focus on deficits and lead to defensiveness, but it doesn't have to be that way.
In, “How ChatGPT Changed My Plans for Fall,” Corey Robin explains how his daughter used ChatGPT to quickly generate solid answers to take-home essay questions he assigned his students last year. As a result, he’s reluctantly considering implementing in-class exams for the first time in nearly 30 years of teaching.
I thought the article did a great job conveying the sense of grief and mixed emotions many writing instructors are feeling lately. The final paragraph where Robin compares the writing process to psychoanalysis was particularly interesting, but what really stuck with me was something I saw in the comments. One instructor wrote, “My job is neither to police students who don’t want to learn nor to rank students via grades, but to maximize learning for those who want to learn, and try to inspire the others to try to join in the learning.”
As someone whose teaching philosophy can easily veer off into permissive, “fun-uncle” territory, this comment didn’t strike me as too controversial, so I was a bit surprised to see the following reply.
“Teachers who ask questions like yours tend to see school as just a personal development system. Not sure why you were able to get this far in teaching without seeing the catastrophic impact that laissez-faire attitudes towards cheating have on the entire system. Teachers like you kill the system entirely, creating ever more cheaters.”
Well, that escalated quickly.
There’s a bit more to the original comment and response, but I think the quotes above capture the essential debate. On the one side, we have the teachers who are ruining education by letting students eat candy for breakfast. On the other, we have the disciplinarians thanklessly holding the whole tattered system together. (No ChatGPT until you’ve eaten every last Brussels sprout on your plate!)
The tone of this interaction reminded me of something I saw recently in a Facebook group titled Higher Ed Discussions of AI in Writing. Someone posted a reasonable question and prefaced it by asking that they not be “skewered” for being reluctant to embrace AI in their course.
While I’d love to dig into the myriad reasons why educators are stressed, burned out, and entitled to be more snippy than usual, that’s a post for another day. (Feel free to share your hot takes in the comments.) Instead, here’s a list of questions that can help keep the tone of your next AI-related meeting a little more civil, empathetic, and solution-oriented.
Providing Support and Managing Risk
What support do you need to learn more about AI and feel empowered?
What obstacles need to be removed?
What might backfire?
What risks would you be taking on?
Evaluating Learning Objectives and Assessment
What skills might be lost if students rely too heavily on AI?
What AI skills might be essential for students in the future?
Should course/program learning objectives be updated? What might that process/timeline look like?
Which assessments are solid as is? Which might need minor adjustments or a major redesign?
What strengths and weaknesses can we identify for specific assessment methods?
Addressing Ethical Concerns
How can we support AI literacy in a way that is ethical and equitable?
When might AI use be forbidden, discouraged, encouraged, or required? Why/how might this vary for specific courses, assignments, students, or instructors?
How might we address concerns around data privacy, unpaid labor, and equal access?
Templates and Tools for Hands-On Workshops
If you’d like to facilitate a deeper dive into potential strengths and weaknesses of incorporating AI, consider using a SWOT analysis template. This might feel a bit too much like a corporate training exercise for some instructors, but others might find this simple visual framework helpful as they identify ideas and concerns. In the hands-on trainings I run, I often use a brainstorming tool like Miro or Jamboard for these types of activities to ensure takeaways are captured and shared. Depending on time constraints and the audience, I might also include pre-populated sticky notes in the margins with examples that can easily be dragged into place or reworded.