When given the prompt, “write me an introduction sentence to an opinion column about how AI can benefit higher education institutions,” ChatGPT churns out a wordy, run-on line without any real substance that most professors would immediately flag as suspicious.
"As higher education faces mounting challenges and opportunities, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize the way institutions teach, learn, and operate, paving the way for a more dynamic and efficient academic landscape," read the AI response.
There’s no question that students have been abusing artificial intelligence, and this abuse makes colleges wary of it. It’s easy to pigeonhole new technologies into the role of villains when time isn’t taken to understand the full scope of what they can do, and the cost seems to outweigh the benefits. But as AI quickly advances, there’s no denying that it will become a larger part of everyone’s lives, and maybe it’s time for universities to embrace it.
Indiana University’s landing page for staff use of AI is brief, answering only four questions in one or two sentences each: What is AI, and how can faculty, staff, and students use it? The university’s teaching resources page on addressing AI in the classroom mostly deals with how professors can detect its use in student assignments and how it could be used for student learning.
To IU’s credit, it does have a chatbot for its University Information Technology Services department, and has a list of acceptable and unacceptable uses of AI. Acceptable uses include incorporating AI in lesson planning, email correspondence, event planning, and so on. Prohibited uses include sharing any data with AI that could be considered someone else’s intellectual property or classified institutional data.
While this makes good use of AI at the basic level, it limits its true potential at IU. Professors can use it to easily tackle more mundane tasks, such as grading, while giving students more in-depth feedback.
The AI grading website Gradescope can be linked with Canvas and is already used by over 2,000 universities, including New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania. Professors can use Gradescope to maintain consistency in their grading by quickly making a rubric for each question and grading multiple similar answers simultaneously.
Say a teacher is grading a math test, and they create a grading option to deduct a tenth of a point for missing units. The AI will group those answers so the teacher can check the box in the rubric to deduct the same points from all of the submissions that made that mistake and automatically apply the feedback that they missed units.
That way, each student’s test is graded the same way and professors don’t have to flip back through tests to see how much they subtracted for certain mistakes. Additionally, Gradescope offers data on what mistakes students make the most so professors can better see and address what their class may be struggling with.
Universities as a whole can also benefit from utilizing AI. In 2016, Ivy Tech Community College built, first by hand, and then with AI, an algorithm that could predict students at risk of failing their classes. They had outreach workers reach out to the students by phone to offer help and advice, and as a result, saw a significant decrease in grades of D’s and below. Since then, the program has adapted and improved from new data and helped over 34,000 students.
Georgia State University employed a different approach to boost student grades, specifically first-generation students, by using an AI chatbot in 2021. It sent students reminders about assignments and academic help and was available to answer questions 24/7. As a result, those who received the chatbot messages boasted final grades 11% higher than their peers who did not.
IU’s chatbot is regulated to their technology website, but imagine one that was more universal and could answer questions about enrollment, financial issues, academic advising or even course content like GSU’s. The possibilities and benefits would be endless.
When harnessed by higher education institutions, AI can be used for much more than writing emails and planning events, and it would be a shame for IU to regulate it to menial tasks.
Natalia Nelson (she/her) is a sophomore studying journalism with minors in Spanish and creative technologies in art and design.
