By Kate Cammack, CfT Co-Director
TLDR: A new – and particularly valuable – report on AI from MIT provides concrete guiding principles and a compelling call to action.
We hear a lot about AI as a “crisis in higher education.” The word “crisis” comes from the ancient Greek root krinein, which means “to separate, decide, or judge”. A few years ago, I heard a “crisis” helpfully reframed as akin to the process of sifting sand at the beach – it’s a chance to let all the stuff that you don’t care about fall away, so that you’re left with only the treasures – the most important and valuable things.
For many of us, the AI crisis has invited deep discernment – what are we doing, why are we doing it, and how might we re-center and uplift the values and goals that we care most about?
This past Friday, cognitive psychologist (and MIT alumna) Karen Yu shared a new report on AI from MIT with our department, and it is one of the more lucid, organized, and well-supported pieces on AI in higher education that I’ve read thus far.
It presents guiding principles, including:
- Be humble. AI has evolved so rapidly, and changed our work so quickly and dramatically, that we need to acknowledge what we don’t know and that we must continue to navigate this landscape, as an inevitable aspect of our job as educators. As Brene Brown says, “we’re not looking to be right, we’re looking to get it right” – and, for me, getting it right requires adjustments, course corrections, and (ultimately) a growth mindset.
- Be bold. This is not a time for “patches and duct-tape” but for big thinking and reinvention. That takes cognitive-emotional space and some gas in the tank, so this principle goes hand-in-hand with sustainable teaching and self-care.
- Put humanity front and center. Teaching and learning are relational. We are here for our students, and they are here for us. A crucial goal of higher ed is to “nurture and protect our shared humanity.” As I told my students, if they’re submitting AI work and I’m using AI to grade, we have some real existential problems to grapple with (!)
- Lean into learning. As educators, we are here to show our students how to learn, not just convey content. The report calls us to clarify the process of learning (engaging in productive struggle; engaging in the “hard fun” of thinking) and the product of learning as themselves – their intellectual growth, habits of mind, and ways of being that will enable them to lead purposeful lives. This also might invite us to reconsider the products of learning that students often peg too much importance to – their grades.
- Teach with intentionality. We all tweak and adjust assignments and course materials from semester to semester. However, it can be rare for us to pull back and really ask ourselves what we’re trying to accomplish, and if we’re accomplishing it in the most meaningful ways. If we really consider what our learning objectives are and (re)design from there, we might find that a more expansive and exciting set of possibilities opens up.
There are many more valuable parts to the report, including recommendations for our teaching. Please consider giving it a read.
Looking for outlets to navigate the AI crisis together?
- Join our community of practice (CoP), a come-as-you-are way to think through teaching possibilities together.
- Get a sense of how your students’ learning via our FCR program
- Identify and build your teaching network, by inviting a colleague to coffee or for a walk.
In solidarity,
Kate