By Patrick Xu ’27
Although there are no current Artificial Intelligence (AI) policies in the Bluebook, most teachers enforce AI regulations in their classes. Typically, these rules forbid the use of generative AI, unless there is instructor permission.
Dr. Nicholas Zufelt, Instructor in Computer Science at Andover, speaks on the current policy: “I think different teachers have different takes on it, but largely, [they] are saying that you shouldn’t use it except for particular assessments or assignments that may require it.”
In particular, Zufelt points out the main concern that most teachers may have, which is that AI gives students the opportunity to really opt out of the thinking process. Before tackling the problem, he encourages both teachers and students to learn more about AI, mentioning that the best way to understand how it works is to interact with it: “I’ve noticed watching other people work with AI is that they will give AI a task, and when the output that they get from the AI is not at a level that they would expect it to be, they dismissively say that AI can’t handle this task.”
He compares this to interactions between teachers and students: “What if a teacher gave a task to a student, and the response from that student was less than excellent? Should the teacher give up on the student? No. You give feedback, and you help them try to move forward.” Despite it being inanimate, we should not give up on AI. Only when we understand the limits of its capabilities can we provide a reasonable proscription. Consequently, Dr. Zufelt advises students and teachers to stay resilient by pushing the machine to provide better information. He acknowledges that AI can be scary and encourages everyone to move past this dismissive mentality. Rather than pushing it aside after a couple of unsatisfactory attempts, we should keep working with it to understand its language, purpose, and potential.
Zufelt identifies the role AI often plays in students’ lives and how an overreliance on it can have negative effects. Specifically, he views AI as a double-edged sword that relates to metacognition, the awareness of one’s thinking processes: “Without metacognition, first of all, you’re gonna get bad outputs from AI. Second of all, you have to have really strong metacognition in order to function well with AI. You also must have really strong metacognition in order to function well in the world. As educators, we have spent a long time thinking about how to push students on their ability to be metacognitive, and AI is really putting that to a test, which is why it is definitely a possible concern.”
If used as a tool, AI can boost students’ studies; however, if used to cut corners, students lose the opportunity to learn. Zufelt analyzes why some students may go down the latter route, even when knowing that they are skipping the process of learning: “I think there’s two components that are showing up here. The first component is that thinking is hard work, and everyone in general doesn’t really like doing hard work. The other component that really plays into this particular form of hard work is the extrinsic value being a grade. Grades have way too much influence on students’ lives. When teachers think about grading, I’m sure they think about many different factors, but I think the primary reason that a teacher would give a grade to a student is to help that student understand the level of work that they’re producing. Unfortunately, grades also have this completely different use, which is to communicate to outward facing folks, such as college admissions officers.”
Zufelt points out some ways to change the impact that grades have on students: “I think what we need to do is we need to really think hard about how we give grades and what the real difference between a student that earns a 6 in this class, a student that earns a 5 in this class, and a student that earns a 4 in this class. If 6-level work is something that an AI can do, then that’s a problem with the class, not the student. We need to set up our courses so that earning a 6 or a 5 translates to doing work that the student believes is worth doing and that an AI couldn’t necessarily do well.” While doing so will take time, it will provide much more significance to the concept of grades and encourage students to challenge themselves.
Lastly, Zufelt looks ahead to the future and how he believes the continuous development of AI may be able to benefit the education of students: “I would be really excited to see work become very interdisciplinary and personalized to students. As of now, personalization and differentiation are incredibly time-consuming; it would take too long for a teacher to have the course fulfill every student’s needs. Thus, I would love to see students using AI to help them find work that’s worth doing at the right difficulty, rather than using it to do any of their work. It would just be incredible if we could get AI to do that.”
As Dr. Zufelt has outlined, the world of AI has a lot to offer. Unfortunately, our incomplete understanding of the topic may be hindering us from achieving greater successes. Through developing AI literacy, interacting with generative AI, and understanding how to properly use it as a tool, students can ethically use artificial intelligence to aid their studies. Nonetheless, with the help of educators shifting curriculums to better incorporate AI, the change in attitude and increase in knowledge of students may be even more significant.
Read more articles like this in our Fall 2024 Issue!
