Pittsford, N.Y. (WHAM) — Students at St. John Fisher University are learning about artificial intelligence and how it’s impacting the world around us.
“It is growing and changing so quickly,” said Katie Sabourin, assistant vice principal of digital learning for St. John Fisher. “We are hoping as they grow their own skill set, (they) find out how this technology can be advantageous to them in their daily work and daily lives.”
Sabourin said some classes are using AI to train both faculty and students how to use the technology to their advantage.
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“They can research any possible topic,” she explained. “They can ask it to tutor them on a topic, help them research or explore something, and unlike going to the internet and researching that topic or idea, the AI is going to talk to them like a person would talk to them, which a website doesn’t do.”
AI isn’t just changing the way students learn, but also transforming the way professors plan their lectures and assess how their students are doing.
“It can help them be efficient,” Sabourin said. “It can help them save time. It can also be a thinking partner to help them generate new assignments and new activities, rubrics to assess student work, creating multiple sets of quiz or test questions — which can be very time consuming for an individual.”
Many have raised concerns about the technology being used ethically, as the ability to spot what is written by the student and what is written by artificial intelligence becomes increasingly blurred.
Sabourin said not to worry.
“The idea is not always to detect or catch whether the students are using these tools,” she explained. “It’s to encourage students to use these tools to better their skills and reach levels that they wouldn’t have reached without using these tools to assist them.”
The university is focused on finding ways to use AI in a meaningful and positive way.
“It’s not the best approach to avoid the technology or say ‘I’m not going to use this or not going to let others use it,'” she said. “Really, we have to embrace these changes, and we have to find ways to use it for a power of good and force of good. We can’t do that if we stick our heads in the sand.”
St. John Fisher has an advisory board that meets regularly to evaluate the rapid changes in AI, drafting recommendations on how to use it responsibly.
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