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Artificial intelligence has created an uncomfortable question for college students and professors. If a machine can do the work, what exactly are students supposed to learn?
The easy answer is to ban AI; the harder answer is to teach students how to use it.
After speaking with students and faculty at the University of Tennessee at Martin, I think the harder answer is the correct one.
Tania Parson, a sophomore studying family and consumer sciences with a concentration in fashion merchandising, said AI has become overused to the point that students struggle to know what information is trustworthy.
“I feel like AI is overused to the point where we don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong,” Parson said.
She is not against AI entirely; she said she would use it for things such as generating event ideas or getting a clearer explanation of something she does not understand. That distinction matters.
AI can be a tool for learning. It becomes a problem when the tool replaces learning altogether.
“People don’t use AI as a helping hand,” Parson added. “They just use AI to do the work for them.”
That is where the responsibility falls on both students and universities.
Dr. Adnan Rasool, a political science professor at UT Martin, takes a broader view. He argues that AI is becoming a job skill and that universities have a responsibility to teach students how to use it effectively.
“Students need to be trained,” Rasool said. “How do we train them? This is a job skill.”
I agree.
College should not become a place where students are guided away from technology they will meet after graduation. If employers expect graduates to understand AI, then universities should help students develop that skill.
Although learning how to use AI is not the same as letting AI do the learning for you.
Rasool described an AI-powered syllabus tool developed for the university that saves faculty time creating syllabi. He also said that UT Martin computer science students will work on expanding the tool as part of a class project. In that situation, AI is not replacing education, It is becoming part of it.
That is the model universities should take into consideration.
Instead of asking whether AI should be allowed, we should be asking how it should be used.
Students should learn how to prompt AI, question its answers and verify its information. They should understand that an AI-generated response can sound confident while still being wrong. Most importantly, they should be able to demonstrate their own understanding without handing the thinking over to a machine.
Professors have a role in this, too. Assignments may need to change. If an essay can be generated with a few prompts, the most valuable part of the assignment is no longer the finished essay. It may be the research, reasoning and ability to defend the argument behind it.
There will always be students who misuse AI. That does not mean the technology itself should be treated as the enemy.
The goal of education is not to prepare students for the world that existed before AI. It is to prepare them for the world that exists now.
AI should be a helping hand, it just should never become the hand doing all the work.
