AI Use In Classrooms Rises
St. Lawrence University administration and professors both celebrate and challenge the presence of artificial intelligence in the classroom.
Director of the WORD Studio, Melody Denny, is teaching an AI course in the fall but advises students to take caution when using it in the classroom. “I think it all depends on how you use it and their intentionality,” she said. “If they decide that they want to use it instead of doing the thinking or learning, then it’s going to be bad. I think if they use it as a way to enhance or extend their thinking or learning, I could see how it could be good.”
Regardless of whether AI is included in a professor’s syllabus or not, the use of any AI platform in the classroom should be carefully thought about. Students should determine how AI can help them with their work, not complete it for them. “Academic integrity-you have to follow your syllabus and your assignment sheet and those kinds of things,” Denny said. “And if you’re not sure you need to ask, this is not a ‘beg and ask for forgiveness’. I would definitely ask for permission instead of just going for it.”
AI does have benefits in classroom settings, such as brainstorming. Denny thinks that it can aid in creativity or ideas. “It can give you a lot of different perspectives very quickly,” she said, “because sometimes we are limited by one or two perspectives.”
While some professors forbid the use of AI, Denny teaches a course on the technology. Olivia Sundin ’26 took the course last fall. She said the course helped her understand how to use AI correctly in academic settings. “It introduced me to a lot of good platforms, like NotebookLM,” Sundin said. “Most professors are totally fine with you using it, and it made it a lot easier for me to do harder readings.”
Some professors allow their students to use AI on their assignments as long as they follow the professor’s code of academic honesty. Sundin said her professor, Ronnie Olesker, let her class use AI. “She let us use ChatGPT, any AI we want, as long as we give the prompt that we gave to her and we cite it,” she said. “And that makes me a lot more likely to be honest in AI.”
Professors also consider AI’s side effects when deciding to allow AI in the classroom. Dr. Andrew Donofrio, an assistant professor in the performance and communication arts department who teaches classes such as communication ethics, believes there is a delicate balance in how AI is used for schoolwork. “It feeds into a productivity discourse that’s against deep senses of learning,” Donofrio said. “The critical thinking skills of banging your head against the wall until you come up with a thing will dissipate, and it will eventually lead to sort of a general brain rot, I think.”
Donofrio’s consensus about AI is to use it sparingly in agreeance with each professor’s academic integrity section on their syllabus. “I think when students use AI when they’re not supposed to, they’re cheating themselves,” he said. “But I think that’s an individual ethical, moral thing that students have to navigate on their own.”
AI is a valuable tool and should be allowed in the classroom, but with restraints. Caroline Hamilton ’26, a biomedical science major, believes that AI has great potential but also raises concerns when it is abused. “I also think it is also a really powerful enabler for people who aren’t really committed to doing the actual work for an assignment or for life in general,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton is cautious about using AI but does not prevent her from using it for select work. “I’ll write something, and I’ll put it into Grammarly or ChatGPT and just say, make this sound grammatically correct,” Hamilton said. “Or I’ll use AI to make citations a lot.”