Framing Thoughts on AI

   

AI in Teaching & Learning

Challenges and Opportunities

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools - GPS, weather forecasting, speech recognition, auto-completion, etc. - pervade our technologically connected lives, amplifying, assisting, and predicting human effort. While we, as teachers and learners, may not be able to match the pace and anticipate the fluidity of innovation in generative AI technologies (such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, LaMDA, Bard, and others), the response of learning institutions to their capacities rightly begins with some reflection on foundational pedagogical principles, examining our educational practices in light of those principles. Accordingly:

  1. UNI is committed to a contemporary and informed emphasis on the process of learning over its products. Any tasks delegated to (or insulated from) AI tools must be chosen thoughtfully to preserve each student’s opportunity to engage in a process of learning, including iterative practice, reflection, failure, effort, and growth. 
  2. At the same time, it makes sense for students to learn to master, leverage, and critique appropriate tools (new and old) in informed ways as they prepare to identify and address compelling needs in their personal, professional, and civic lives.
  3. The challenges and opportunities of AI, and our pedagogical responses, will differ depending on our academic disciplines and media, class sizes and modalities, the needs and interests of individual faculty and students, and more. 
  4. Technologies do not displace the urgent needs of our shared world, and they should not distract us from our values and purposes, including the subjects, objects, and beneficiaries of our work; indeed, we have an obligation to critique new technologies in terms of such values. Our responses to disruptive technology should aspire to sustainability and be scaled according to what is humanly meaningful and possible. 

Also, responsible approaches to AI in learning must come to terms with issues of access, equity, and privacy that are raised by these tools and their uses. 

Disruption, innovation, exhaustion. Sound familiar? As faculty, staff, and students share similar challenges and opportunities, we can also come together to prioritize community and health. Some practical considerations for teachers are summarized here, followed by a resource collection to facilitate a deeper dive into a range of topics impacting our work with learners.