Faculty members at St. Lawrence University are gradually beginning to employ AI technology in their teaching. After the technology began to gain popularity last spring, some professors have taken part in workshops and have started to embrace it in their classes.
“In March, April and May, there was a lot of questions and discussions around how the technology worked and how it could be used in the classroom,” said David Ludwig, who is the interim vice president of SLU IT. “And this is not unique to SLU. On several listservs with hundreds of institutions we are having those same discussions.” If this was the case, what made some SLU professors decide to implement AI into their coursework?
“One thing we try to do here is get students to become self-learners,” said Ed Harcourt, a professor in the Math, Computer Science and Statistics Departments. “It can free up more of my time and help the student become a better self-learner.” Not only can it give students more initiative, it can also improve their academic skillset.
“This tool can allow us to communicate and teach to our students more effectively,” said Mert Kartal, an associate professor in the Government Department. “AI, just like a tutor, it could show students how they can fix some of their writing issues.” In addition, it can be a great resource for students to assist them with some assignments.
“It can help refine our code to yield the exact result we wanted without our professor,” said Matt Maslow ’24, a Data Science major at SLU. “It also helped me relearn Python, which I hadn’t taken since freshman year.” Furthermore, it helps students get more out of the time that they spend in the classroom. “It is very helpful in terms of writing a lot of test code and implementing some longer problems that we have done before,” said Ben Moolman ’24, a Mathematics major. “So, we have more time for learning other things in the classroom and less time writing out redundant and extra code.”
However, there is still some concern about AI and how it could hinder the student learning experience. “You have to problem solve and work the neurons to restructure thought processes,” said Harcourt. “It would almost be like if you were on an athletic team, and you told the coach ‘I am not going to practice today I am just going to have someone go for me.’” This concern seems to be a common theme amongst faculty members. “In all of my syllabi now I have a section saying that the use of AI is not allowed, unless it is for specified purposes,” said Kartal. “I am encouraging my students to create a paper or a paragraph and then use AI to polish it, but it is still very important for students to create it on their own without any AI assistance.”
In addition, the technology itself may have some flaws of its own. “It does have a tendency to hallucinate and basically make up information that is not true,” said Ludwig. “So being aware of that possibility is important.”
The development of AI is not just something that professors are using, as we could possibly feel its impact all around campus. “I think we will see it become less of a standalone system like Chat GPT is,” Ludwig explained. “It will begin to be incorporated into other products, such as Canvas.”
Regardless of where it takes us, this new technology is developing rapidly and will continue to be a topic of conversation in classes and around campus. “We will have to be thoughtful about how it is used in the future,” stated Ludwig. “We can proceed optimistically but also cautiously.”