How is artificial intelligence changing the learning process, and is it “good” or bad”? This was the focus of the third installment of Louisiana Christian University’s Guinn Conversations on AI, held Sept. 10.
Moderated by LCU President Dr. Mark Johnson, student leaders shared firsthand accounts of how AI has affected their collegiate educational experiences. Panelists included: Andrew Burnaman, a junior secondary biology education major; Nathan Mudd, a senior business administration major; Dylan Wells, a senior Christian studies major; Isabella McClendon, a senior social work major; and Pedro Deon, a senior computer science international student from Brazil. The students were joined by Dan Condell, the founder of DGC Strategy, an AI strategy and consulting company based in Pineville, and LCU Vice President for Institutional Advancement Dr. Beth Palmer.
Most of the students remarked that the positives outweigh the negatives they see with using AI, but McClendon was the lone voice of serious concern for the new technology, especially as it relates to mental health.
“I’ve already seen what social media has done to our generation, and how we just kind of recycle thoughts of what’s popular on social media,” she said. “I think we’re already trained to recycle thoughts. That’s why I think AI is so dangerous, and why I’m really hesitant to be pro-AI.”
McClendon said she fears that reliance on AI will exacerbate problems with forming relationships that have already happened with digital technology.
She spoke of her experience spending the summer in Asia, where she did not have access to her phone or social media.
“I realized how reliant I was on my phone when I didn’t have that to cope or deal with problems,” McClendon said. “When I had to sit alone with myself and couldn’t give them to my phone or another person on the other end, I grew so much. That was really impactful. That’s why it’s so concerning for mental health. We use it as a numbing agent.”
If you can simply ask AI for resources on dealing with any kind of issue, you lose the human and relational elements of processing and working through things.
Burnaman agreed that AI will never have empathy or emotions.
“It can’t sit with you and look you in the eye and empathize,” he said.
However, the students and Condell did see many positives for the use of AI both in and out of the classroom.
Condell said that for someone like him, who has dyslexia, the benefits are great. AI can help put difficult concepts into a form that is much easier to process for students with different types of learning abilities.
Burnaman said he is using AI to make practice questions for him from transcribed lectures he has recorded. It can also act as a personal tutor for material he repeatedly misses questions on. AI can also act as a research assistant when assigned a paper.
“It can find where something is in a text” when you want to cite something you read in a paper or book,” he said. AI can also grade a student’s paper with the rubric provided.
Still, McClendon said she fears students relying on AI instead of original thought in completing assignments. While it can be used to break down difficult text and ideas, she said “we miss something when we’re just summarizing and then asking AI what it thinks is most important. I might go through and find something completely different that AI missed.
“If we’re always taking in something that’s easy, we’re going to put out stuff that’s equally as easy to comprehend without much critical thought.”
Burnaman agreed, saying AI cuts corners on topics. He studies biblical Greek, which he said AI gets wrong all the time because of its complexity.
“We have to question if AI is right,” he said. “And we won’t know if we haven’t read the work.”
Condell said the critical thinking skills are what employers are looking for.
“They want to know you can think critically and can question the machine,” he said.
So, it’s essential that educators put guardrails in place during the learning process.
Currently, students said professors are all over the place with their acceptance of AI or the lack thereof. Some are embracing it but monitoring its usage, while others don’t want students to touch it.
Wells said professors need to educate students on how to use AI in ways that will benefit them in their learning.
While concerns about academic integrity with the use of AI are legitimate, Mudd said that students who cheat are going to just continue to cheat using AI, but he believes most students will use it ethically.
Outside of the classroom, students discussed the ways—both serious and entertaining—that they have used AI.
Deon said he was able to create an app to manage issues in his dorm, and McClendon said she has enjoyed some of the features AI can add to photographs to place you in a different place or with different objects.
As someone who has worked in higher education for 40 years, Palmer shared a different perspective on how she uses AI for processing educational data. She said she is amazed by the efficiency of it all.
“We have to train it by asking good questions,” she said. “It’s exciting.”
