Generative AI is profoundly disrupting higher education, forcing universities to grapple with academic integrity, pedagogical shifts, and the need to equip students with new skills for a future workforce increasingly reliant on AI.
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amna: This year's senior class
at universities across the
country is the first to have
spent nearly its entire college
career in the age of generative
ai, a type of artificial
intelligence that can create new
content, like text and images.
As the technology improves, it's
harder to distinguish from human
work.
And it's shaking academia to its
core with some very big
questions.
Special correspondent Fred de
Sam Lazaro has the story for our
series, rethinking college.
>> And the principle of humanity
says, treat all people as ends
in themselves, never merely as
means.
Fred: About two years ago, Megan
Fritts, a philosophy professor
at the university of Arkansas at
Little Rock, began spotting
something unusual about her
students' writing.
>> You suddenly get an essay or
a test answer, some kind of
assignment from a student who's
normal writing you're familiar
with, and you get something back
that sort of sounds like an
official business document or a
piece of technical writing.
Writing that sounds very highly
polished, but very impersonal.
Fred: Impersonal because it
likely wasn't written by a
person.
This was the beginning of a
turning point for higher Ed, as
generative ai had swept through,
not only her campus, but college
campuses across the country.
A survey last year found that
86% of college students are now
using ai tools, like chatgpt,
Claude ai, and Google gemini,
for school work.
The reason generative ai has
spread so quickly on college
campuses is not hard to
understand.
It's transformed tasks that used
to take hours, even days, of
writing and revision into
something that can be done in
mere minutes.
For example, I can ask chatgpt,
write me a 1000-word essay on
the topic of, "Is it ok to lie?"
And using a massive amount of
data, it predicts and generates
sentences on this topic
instantly.
Fritts says the impact has been
deeply disruptive.
>> If I'm reading the writings
of chatgpt instead of my
students, I have lost the very
best tool that I have to see if
I am being effective in my
capacity as an instructor or
not.
>> We really need a framework in
which people can use these
things and innovate
while minimizing the risk.
Fred: University policymakers
have scrambled to stay ahead.
>> I think the realization over
the past year and a half is the
technology is outpacing our
ability to detect it.
Fred: Vice provost of research
Brian berry leads one of U.A.
Little Rock's committees tasked
with creating clear campus-wide
policies on ai.
>> I think it really comes down
to us helping students
understand what's at risk.
Helping them understand that if
they use ai in the right way,
it's literally the most powerful
tool that they've ever been able
to use and it will make huge
differences.
But if they use it in the wrong
way, it could short circuit
their learning process.
Fred: The university is
finalizing a policy that lets
professors determine what ai use
is acceptable in their
classrooms, as long as they
clearly outline it in their
syllabus.
But for Fritts, who has a strict
no ai policy, identifying it has
been complicated and time
consuming.
>> Phrasely is one of the
softwares that I use.
If I suspect ai use, then the
first thing I do is I do use
detection software.
I actually use eight different
detection softwares.
Fred: If her suspicion is
confirmed, she does meet with
the student.
>> If they can talk about the
thing that they wrote about,
then great.
But a lot of times they can't.
Fred: Sounds like it's tedious
and a lot more work for
professors like yourself.
>> It certainly cuts into my
life quite a bit.
It, at least has sometimes, made
teaching feel like policing.
Fred: And these detection
methods are not foolproof.
Students online say that they're
caught in the middle.
>>We might find out if I'm
about to get kicked out of
college.
Fred: Ashley Dunn was a senior
at Louisiana state university
when she was accused of using ai
to write a short essay for a
British literature class, after
a detection tool flagged her
writing last year.
>> I was like, am I gonna fail
this class?
Am I gonna get a zero?
Every college takes plagiarism
and that kind of thing very
seriously.
So I was just freaking out.
Fred: After communicating with
her professor, Dunn says she was
eventually given an a for the
assignment, but the response to
her on tiktok proves that this
is a widespread issue.
>> A lot of people ended up
making responses to my video,
pretty much saying that they had
gone through the same thing, but
that they didn't really get as
lucky and they ended up either
getting zeros or failing the
class.
Some people recently have been
making videos about, oh, my
professor said that my essay was
ai because I used an emdash, and
, but that's just a regular way
of writing, especially for a
college level.
Fred: Not all schools are anti
ai.
Some are actually looking for
ways to embrace it.
Lori Kendall teaches an
entrepreneurship class in the
fisher college of business at
the Ohio state university.
>> When gen ai came out, I and
every other instructor did, oh,
great.
Now what?
Do we allow ai?
Do we not allow ai?
And the reality is, you know
what?
They're going to use it anyway.
Fred: She now encourages her
students to use to ai to
critically examine their
original work and as a learning
aid.
>> A lot of people might use ai
just to get assignments done or
plagiarism, but I like to use ai
for deeper understanding.
Fred: Rachel Gervais is a first
year student, majoring in air
transportation.
>> I oftentimes use ai to create
questions regarding this topic.
So I not only get a better
understanding of the actual
material, but I also can test
and see what I need to maybe
focus on even more.
>> If you don't use ai or the
next technology that comes along
to be effective, you're not
going to be competitive in the
job market.
The job market's changing right
underneath your feet.
>> As the chief academic
officer, I get to decide on
academic integrity issues, honor
code, and violations.
Fred: Ravi bellamkonda is the
executive vice president and
provost at Ohio state
university.
He says he was struck by one
alleged violation last year, a
student accused of using ai.
It was a case of cheating, he
says, but it made him think.
>> What if there existed
technology that indeed lets our
students produce work of very
high quality?
Shouldn't we investigate this a
little further?
Fred: Bellamkonda spearheaded
Ohio state's new ai fluency
initiative, which requires that
all undergraduate students,
across academic disciplines,
learn and use ai tools.
>> The trick is to figure out,
like any human interaction with
technology, what can we offload
to technology, and what do we
need to add value to?
Ohio state wants to be at the
front of that creation of those
rules.
Fred: That's prompted
experimentation across the
disciplines, like music
professor Tina Tallon's ai and
music class, which explores
innovative uses of the
technology.
>> I always start the class by
asking them to think about a
challenge in their field.
At that point, we're not even
talking about ai.
I just want them to identify
something that either they've
run up against or that their
students or their colleagues
have.
Fred: One member of her class,
tuba instructor and doctoral
student will Roesch, is using ai
to analyze airflow into his
instrument over thousands of
repetitions.
The data will help guide
students on how to play the
perfect note.
Another, Natalia Moreno
Buitrago, is a music education
grad student studying how babies
acquire musical knowledge.
She used to spend hours combing
through home recordings of
research subjects, listening for
moments when parents or
caregivers sing or hum around
the infant.
Now, ai does this for her.
>> If we critically examine the
tools that we're engaging with
and are actively involved in the
development of them, I think we
can do some pretty incredible
things.
Fred: But, inevitably, these
tolls also bring major
disruption, both to academia,
and to the jobs students hope to
someday fill.
>> How do we go through a
transformative moment like this
with the disruptions that it is
going to cause
and yet do this in a way that
ultimately is additive to us as
a society?
That it improves our lot as
human beings?
Fred: A question without a clear
answer, he says, but one that
students should help tackle.
For the pbs "News hour," I'm
Fred de Sam Lazaro, in Columbus,
Ohio.
♪♪
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