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Posted on 04/04/2026 1:00:22 PM PDT by karpov
AI is here to stay, the experts say. Don’t fight it. Embrace it and give students a legitimate way to use AI in their writing.
I’ve heard those claims since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in late 2022 and sounded the death of the college essay. I’m an AI skeptic. As a historian, I know that teaching students to write and think for themselves is a crucial part of my job. But I’m also open-minded. As a historian, I know well the many examples of people resisting new technology simply because it’s disruptive—before embracing the same tech as an essential part of life.
So last year I decided to give AI a chance. I incorporated an AI-assisted option into the writing assignments for my history courses, expecting students to jump at the chance to use the technology that they’re already using all the time.
The assignment failed. Only a handful of students chose the AI option.
I teach survey courses, such as U.S. History from the Colonial Period to Reconstruction and the Greek, Roman, and Medieval portion of Western Civ. My classes are big, usually between 100 and 200 students or more. Throughout a semester, I assign several short papers based on a selection of readings or a documentary. Whatever the topic, I ask students to offer a personal perspective on what they’ve read or viewed. I want them to connect to the past through their own experiences.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
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The idea that the majority of "faculty" would like their captives (students) to develop their own ability to think, critically and independently, might just be a pipe dream.
Kudos to this professor.
How many used it but wouldn’t admit it wasn’t their work?
It seems to me that there are two basic choices:
1) Accept the idea that students will lean heavily on AI. Maybe make the assignments more challenging since the students will have “help”. In any case, if they use it, they use it. There’s not much you can do about it.
2) Make everything an oral exam. Have the student sit in front of a proctor and have them verbally explain the material they were taught and were supposed to absorb. The student either knows it or they don’t.
Here’s the heart of the issue:
“ At bottom, the debate about AI in writing assignments is really a debate about the purpose of an education: as learning for its own sake or to master currently-in-demand skills. Universities, being large, complex institutions with multiple stakeholders and interests, usually try to have it both ways.”
If they are teaching students to succeed in the job market, they must teach them to use AI because everyone will.
If it’s about learning, they must teach the student to think.
What are students paying for?
The answer there is blue books.
But we’ll continue to raise students with stunted brains unless we also get ALL tech out of the classroom, their phones taken from them, and hard-copy books only regular assignments.
The-irony -is- that- the- article- was -probably- written- by AI-just -look- at -the -punctuation.
As I remarked similarly on another thread, I use duckai, chatgpt, gimini and grok to research certain topics, including historical subjects.
I purposely use all four to see if the answers match. I’ve discovered they do not, that they use the internet at such places as reddit and wikipedia and many others to come up with quick answers.
There are a few historical subjects I consider myself an expert on since I was a party to the subjects back in the day, and ai is wrong on these subjects quite often because they are simply regurgitating the garbage they find on the net.
In part, an expensive professor. I suppose AI can do that job and probably no need for the expensive campuses, either.
I didn’t see any punctuation errors in this article.
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