AI Revolution in Higher Education: Challenges, Fears, and Strategic Solutions

Today’s discussion focuses on how AI is transforming higher education and addresses the common fears educators have regarding its impact on their roles. We explore practical strategies for leveraging AI, ensuring academic integrity, and adapting to a new educational landscape while emphasizing the importance of human connection in teaching.

• Understanding AI tools and their benefits for education 
• Addressing fears about job replacement due to AI 
• Analyzing the role of AI in enhancing student engagement 
• Strategies for effective grading and personalized feedback 
• Importance of ethical practices in AI usage in academia 
• Future-proofing careers through AI literacy and professional development 
• Key takeaways for adapting to AI in higher education

Until next time, keep grading, keep growing, and keep making a difference in your students' lives.

Dr. Rutledge

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating AI in Higher Education
• 13:44 Thriving With AI in Education

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Grading Papers, the podcast dedicated to supporting and empowering adjunct professors. I'm your host, dr Randy Anita Rutledge, a 14-year adjunct professor, and I am thrilled to embark on this journey with you. Today we're going to talk about something that has been making the waves in academia artificial intelligence in higher education. Ai is reshaping how we teach, how we grade, how we interact with students, and while there are many benefits, there are also legitimate concerns. Many educators feel overwhelmed by the pace of AI's evolution. They also are uncertain about its impact and even fearful about displacement. But fear not, because today we're going to explore these concerns and we're going to discuss a few strategic solutions that allow educators to adapt, thrive and lead in this new AI world. So the lack of understanding when it comes to AI, it's like it makes us feel overwhelmed as teachers, and you have to ask yourself why am I feeling overwhelmed about AI? Because it's overwhelming, right. One of the biggest hurdles to AI adoption in higher education is a lack of understanding. Many adjuncts and teachers alike, full-time professors they hear these buzzwords like machine learning, automation, chatbots, but they really aren't sure what it actually means for them. So let's break it down. Ai in education includes tools like automated grading systems, plagiarism checkers like Grammarly, chatbots for student support and adaptive learning platforms platforms that adapt to student learning needs. So, when you think about these tools, they aren't replacing professors. They're actually enhancing the way that we work. Now, if you're an adjunct, you know that there's a lot of work that you do that you don't get compensated for. So when you think of AI, what is the key challenge? The challenge is professors aren't being trained to use AI effectively, and without this training, it leads to resistance and confusion. So then you get a lot of different types of content that you have to add in your syllabus telling students not to use any AI, else they get an F or a zero. Or telling students that their paper will be checked for AI, and if they get checked and they are found to be using it, which is against the university policy, then there are all sorts of punishments that they receive.

Speaker 1: 3:00

You can look around and AI is not going anywhere. It is actually being adopted in many, many of the domains that we work in. That's education, that's law there. Ai that can be used within academia, right. So when you think about solutions, how could we solution AI to be effective in academia?

Speaker 1: 3:38

Thinking about students because I want you to know they're using it. When I'm grading papers, I can see AI all up and down the papers and it makes me wonder are students learning anything? Or are they using it just to get a grade to get out of university so they can get a job that they won't know otherwise how to work in that job they may not have the skillset or the competency or the capacity to do the things that they're asked. So if you think about AI from that perspective, you can create solutions where you graft it in and you might use a part of it and let students know it's okay to use a part of it for the assignment so that learning can still take place. So institutions need to provide AI training for educators. If your school isn't offering this, seek out online workshops or communities that provide AI literacy for education. Being proactive about learning AI can put you ahead of the curve. Now I'm using the intelligence of AI models in my easy adjunct apps and it has saved me so much time. It has increased my understanding of the gaps and the weak points, of where my students need more emphasis and they need tip sheets and all kinds of things to help them learn what they need to learn in the courses that I teach, which is big data, data, science, analytics, etc. So you shouldn't have the type of fear that oftentimes we have as educators because we're not trained and we're not knowledgeable. So let's talk about that fear factor.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Will AI replace educators? Ai has sparked such fear and anxiety in the educational sector, particularly around job security. I've seen, and you've probably seen and even heard, that AI automatic grading and answering student questions and even generating lesson plans is one of the ways that adjuncts and professors are going to lose their job or be displaced, but that's not true. I want to address some of the real concerns about these fear factors. Will AI replace educators? Well, the short answer is no. Ai is really a tool. It's not a teacher. It lacks the emotional intelligence, the mentorship and adaptability that human educators bring to the classroom. So don't fear that your job is going to be gone. No, you will be able to do more of what you like to do, which is really teaching. Ai will change the way we work, though. Some routine tasks will be automated and institutions may begin to rely more on AI driven assessments.

Speaker 1: 6:50

The challenge for adjuncts and faculty is to evolve with the AI rather than to resist it. So a solution here could be instead of fearing displacement, focus on upskilling right. Think about how you can start to understand prompt engineering. Help your students gain this skill set so that they can learn how to do research, learn how to pose questions, how to create outlines for the paper that they are going to write. You can leverage AI tools in many, many ways. So the goal is to learn how to use AI for efficiency. Use AI for efficiency, and that's whether you're using it for AI powered grading to speed up your feedback and I mean personalized feedback, unbiased feedback based on the rubric and the assignment instructions and then leverage AI to enhance student engagement.

Speaker 1: 8:03

There's so many different ways that you can roll AI into your course and into academia. So what are some strategic approaches? How can educators thrive in an AI-driven world? You might be asking yourself you know, how do we strategically adapt to this new AI-driven landscape? Well, here are some key approaches. Number one you want to leverage AI for smarter grading. Start to think about using AI-assisted grading tools to help you automate routine tasks while maintaining control over the final assessment. You can use AI tools to help you, and then you review what you get as the output from the AI. You still read your students papers, you still read their feedback, but then you have an unbiased tool or list of ways that you can respond and even personalize feedback for that student. Some of the platforms, like Turnitin, grammarly and other platforms, can help provide feedback more efficiently without compromising academic integrity.

Speaker 1: 9:22

Number two rethink student engagement. Ai-powered chatbots can answer frequently asked student questions, freeing up your time for deeper engagement. You know, when the course first starts, there are a lot of questions that students ask and sometimes it's because they haven't taken the time to read through the syllabus or read the start here prompt and those types of things. Well, you could use a chatbot with frequently asked questions that students have been asking for some time, especially if you keep a list of those and you can feed that chatbot with that list and the answers. And then you could have an AI Q&A chatbot for those types of things that students can go to and get their answers to the questions, like Snap. You could also think about personalized learning tools like adaptive quizzes, and these help cater to different student learning styles so you can actually create quizzes that once a student answers a quiz question and maybe they get it incorrect. It can funnel the student into another set of questions to help them better understand or to see if they really know the answer, but they just didn't understand the question. You can set boundaries on AI usage. While AI can streamline tasks, don't become overly reliant on it. As a professor or adjunct, you want to make sure you keep that human oversight, because it's crucial when it comes to grading and feedback and classroom interactions.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Number four advocate for ethical practices when it comes to using AI. Push for transparency in AI use in your organization and your institution. Who is designing the AI? Are there biases present in that AI? You wanna ensure that the AI tools align with ethical academic practices and enhance, rather than hinder, the student learning. I would say.

Speaker 1: 11:39

Another thing to do is number five future-proof your career. Instead of being fearful of AI, I would embrace it. I would read about it, learn about it and find out where your curiosity lies and, based on that curiosity and your teaching style and your teaching philosophy, think of ways that you can use AI personally in your academic career, as well as with the students that you're teaching and the students that are learning. Upskilling in AI literacy will make you more indispensable. You could even find yourself gaining more projects, gaining more courses and maybe even increasing the compensation that you get because you have this skill.

Speaker 1: 12:29

You want to stay ahead of the trends by attending AI-related webinars and workshops or collaborating on AI-driven research. Now, that's a space you can get ahead in. Think about academia and integrating AI into the academic landscape, and what research can you do there? Right, don't be fearful of AI, and I would say start to jot down ideas in your courses and think about ways that you could revamp your courses to include and to embrace AI, to let your students know you're not a dinosaur and you understand how technology is growing by leaps and bounds and you're here to help the student learn and that you're partnering with them in their learning journey. Embracing AI as an educational ally is what we all have to do, because AI is not our enemy, it's a tool and you can use that tool, and when you use it strategically, you can make teaching more effective and less time consuming, and you know I'm all for that.

Speaker 1: 13:44

So the key takeaways from today's podcast adaptation is power. If educators embrace AI and use it wisely and be one of the ones who thrive in this new, evolving landscape of higher education, you'll find that your fear was unwarranted. It was just the need to upskill and better understand where technology is going. Embrace the technology, learn about it, find where your curiosity lies, jot down ideas for using AI and maybe even revamping some of your courses so that you can further engage your students. What are your thoughts on AI in education? Let me know. Text me right here at Grading Papers Podcast. We thank you for tuning in to Grading Papers. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with your colleagues and friends. Until next time, keep grading, keep growing and keep making a difference in your students lives.