WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Improving the educational experience of students is a top priority for Dr. Betsy Barre. As the Executive Director of the Center for Advancement of Teaching at Wake Forest University, she works to find innovative teaching practices for faculty. Her latest project is how to address the use of artificial intelligence.
“I think you know, it’s all still very new for all of us,” Dr. Barre said. “We’re still all, like many industries, trying to figure it out. First, what artificial intelligence is and thinking through how it works and where it might be in five to 10 years, but also how it’s going to impact how we teach.”
This past Spring, Dr. Barre conducted a series of forums and panels for faculty to discuss AI and how it could transform the classroom. The biggest concern was the potential for academic dishonesty.
“Instead of doing the work themselves, using it to submit work that they didn’t do,” Dr. Barre said. “If we give a student a prompt on an essay, they might just type that prompt in and get a response from ChatGPT and send it back.”
She said faculty was also concerned that over-reliance on technology could compromise students’ ability to learn independently.
“They may not learn as much as they could,” Dr. Barre said. “I think that’s a thing that worries me is that if students start using it more and more in ways to make their life easier in some ways it may make things harder for them. If they’re not learning the things they need to learn as they leave the university.”
Though many questions remain about the dangers of AI, Dr. Barre said embracing it could potentially benefit both educators and students. This includes assisting in curriculum planning for teachers and tutoring for students.
Matt Garite is an assistant professor of English at Wake Forest. His students began collaborating with AI technology in the Fall of 2022.
“I wanted to try to model for students a way we could interact with language generators that were inspired by a sense of love and trust rather than fear because I think AI has historically been represented in a dystopian light in the history of science fiction narratives of the past half-century or more,” Garite said.
WFMY News 2’s Lauren Coleman asked Garite about the benefits of collaborating with technology in this way.
“I don’t think of it as one that has to be ranked hierarchy as superior to human intelligence or needs to be tested in terms of how well it matches human intelligence,” Garite said. “It’s just a different type of intelligence. When we collaborate with other intelligence, that diversity of knowledge and language used can create openings for, for awesome novel unprecedented new ideas to emerge.”
Dr. Barre said AI isn’t something higher education should be afraid of.
“I don’t think AI is going away soon,” Dr. Barre said. “We need to help our students understand it, help them understand how it works, but then also help them understand when they shouldn’t use it. Or why they might not want to use it or help them prepare for a world in which they might be the people regulating policy about how AI should be used or not used within society.”