This Faculty Focus essay by Mary Ruth Wallen, who has taught writing at Big Sandy Community and Technical College in Kentucky since 2003, asks how colleges should respond to AI and argues that students belong in those discussions. It opens with a debate in her Writing II class, where a student said she was in college for a reason and asked how having ChatGPT summarize an article would build her analytical skills.
Wallen writes that technology has moved faster than our understanding of it and that no educator or institution has the single right approach. She says surveillance and fear-messaging haven't curbed AI use, that checkers can be faulty, and, citing Jess Luo, that trust between teachers and students has suffered. Students face mixed signals, from signed no-AI contracts and blue-book essays to rules asking them to cite their AI use, and many stay silent as a result. She also notes graduates booing commencement speakers over AI remarks. In her own online asynchronous classes, a focus on detection and the required meetings that followed tainted the spirit of the course.
The student's comment made her see how comfortable she'd become waiting for direction from above, a point she connects to California math teacher Al Rabanera. She then proposes ways to reset the classroom:
- Ask students early on to reflect on their goals and the skills the course offers, along with the obstacles they expect and how to handle them, an idea she ties to Pauline Stamp's Purpose-First Learning.
- Survey students about their AI use in private and academic life, then use the results to start a two-way discussion about ethical and unethical use.
She cites a Swansea University study finding that disengaged students are more likely to use AI tools, and argues that students who see value in their work are more likely to own their writing. She closes by calling for classrooms built on trust, dialogue and shared reflection, with students given a genuine seat at the table.