Members of the College of Arts and Sciences share their thoughts on AI and its impact on educatio

Baggett, Andrew

Evanstein, Emily

VanBeek, Gennie

English

DigitalCommons@Linfield

Linfield Magazine Volume 19 Number 1 Fall 2023 Article 6 Fall 2023 Voices of Linfield Gennie VanBeek Linfield University Emily Evanstein Linfield University Andrew Baggett Linfield University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/linfield_magazine Recommended Citation VanBeek, Gennie; Evanstein, Emily; and Baggett, Andrew (2023) "Voices of Linfield," Linfield Magazine: Vol. 19: No. 1, Article 6. Available at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/linfield_magazine/vol19/iss1/6 This article is brought to you for free via open access, courtesy of DigitalCommons@Linfield. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@linfield.edu. Fall 2023     |     Linfield Magazine - 14 Fall 2023     |     Linfield Magazine - 15Voices of LinfieldVoices of LinfieldAI in education The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) pro-grams in the last year has impacted almost every part of the global economy, and education is no exception. Con-versations at Linfield have swirled – is this the equivalent of the graphing calculator, which gained popularity in the 1990s and led to widespread concerns about cheating and equality? Like calculators, should students use AI as a tool? What constitutes plagiarism? Is there a policy for this, and a way to fairly regulate it? Linfield Magazine asked members of the College of Arts and Sciences – including its dean  and faculty members in education and chemistry – to share their thoughts on AI, its impact and its current and future applications in higher education. Note: All images were created with Fotor’s AI tools and selected by the writers.Assessing process instead of productBy Emily Evanstein, assistant professor and special education program coordinator Artificial intelligence tools are nothing to be feared. At their best, AI tools like ChatGPT provide an opportunity for instructors to consider the specific constructs they are looking to assess and how working with AI could support students in their learning. This might be a shift from focusing on product to process.  What would it look like if we were to assess students on how they get to an outcome rather than simply the outcome itself? Or if educators focused lessons on providing instruction and tools to support students in integrating this technology into their discipline-specific work? It may put more of a premi-um on in-class assessments or assessments that don’t solely focus on written outcomes, which may encourage alternate, and potentially more inclusive, assessment types.  Our goal at the university is to encourage thought pro-cesses that support learning. The foundational work we do is rooted in critical and creative thinking, intellectual challenges and thoughtful dialogue.  Tools like ChatGPT, however, are not a substitute for that critical thinking or the deep understanding that emerges from our classrooms. They are made for expressing ideas or summarizing information. As such, these tools may have an important role to play in helping students organize and express their thoughts when they otherwise may struggle to do so, but they are not a substitute for thinking and engaging with academic content. New technology is always developing, and universities and the educators within them continuously adapt to integrate it. ChatGPT and other generative AI tools present unique chal-lenges, but ultimately, they will become a part of the learning environment. Transparency in how these tools are utilized – in teaching, classwork and assignments – is critical to success-fully integrating them into our work.  And, again, it may be time to assess the process, instead of the product. Let’s evaluate how students are creating, exploring and critically thinking instead of looking exclusively at their outputs. A Copilot in education By Andrew Baggett, associate professor of chemistry   Last November, the public gained access to ChatGPT, and by winter, aca-demia had taken notice — the first term papers had been written by ChatGPT, the first students faced related aca-demic integrity violation hearings, the first wave of articles and opinions from academics circulated widely and the first AI-related language appeared in syllabi. While Linfield has seen some instances of academic integrity violations involving the use of generative AI, the scale of the issue has not been extreme.  The broader Linfield community should prepare for a seismic change that will bring generative AI technology fully front-and-center by the end of 2023 — the integration of the ChatGPT-like Copilot in all Microsoft 365 products. When Copilot is fully integrated within Microsoft products, every student and staffer (and most working professionals) will have access to AI tools at their fingertips, and all positive and negative consequences of using AI will be amplified. Copilot is a fascinating tool. Based on reports, individuals can ask it in simple language to complete a variety of tasks, such as listening to a recording and generating a synopsis, converting a piece of writing into a PowerPoint presentation with added stock images, or finding and explaining trends in data graphed in Excel. Essentially, it can do anything that ChatGPT can do and more. Unlike ChatGPT, which has a “closed” dataset to work with, Copilot will be able to pull and use data and text stored on Microsoft products like SharePoint and Teams to make its output relevant to the user or company.  I believe the future for Linfield is one where our students learn how to use AI tools ethically and proficiently; where faculty and staff streamline their work with AI tools and guide students to develop relevant skills for use in a world that will very quickly consider AI-related skills essential in most professions. AI tools are here to stay, and their use will become nearly universal when they are incorporated into Microsoft products. Linfield is fortunate to have faculty and staff devoting significant energy to carefully planning approaches to using AI tools that will positively impact the value of our students’ degrees.Implementing AI in the classroomBy Gennie VanBeek, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences As a former middle school lan-guage arts teacher, my absolute joy remains hearing my students’ voices in their writing. It should be no surprise, then, that I found the conversations about AI tools and how they are  being used to augment, replace or edit those voices of  utmost importance. AI forced itself to center stage of academic conver-sations in January 2023. At that moment, panic about the ChatGPT-gateway-to-plagiarism was high, and information about how to handle it was low. In January, I sent to faculty the best article I could find at that moment that summarized strat-egies for professors to use in the classroom: “ChatGPT Advice Academics Can Use Now.” Since then, more recent resources present basically the same key points:1. It is impossible to ban AI. Don’t even try. Talk with students   about AI, including when it is appropriate (even helpful)  to use it and when it is not. This leads to #2 . . .2. Consider the purpose of your writing assignments and how   to best structure them to meet student learning goals  and to be difficult to replicate using AI. 3. Help students understand that AI-generated text can be   biased and incorrect. It is not a trustworthy reference tool.4. Utilize in-class writing opportunities, including writing-to-  learn strategies. Writing is a key tool in developing   critical thinking — but it does not need to look like a   traditional essay.5. Do not trust anti-plagiarism software to detect AI.   These programs have spotty performance histories   and are likely to discriminate against non-native   English speakers.   Yesterday it was the graphing calculator, today it is AI, tomorrow it will be something else. What remains the same is that teachers and professors will respond to technological advancements and harness them to promote learning and connection with students. As a teacher educator, I delight in hearing about the unique solutions to today’s challenges in schools that my Linfield students (and our future teachers) generate. Their creativity and cunning will set the bar for decades to come. ChatGPT has nothing on that!

Voices of Linfield

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