Module 0453: AI in Higher Education

• The Roles and Questions
• The basic question
  • Student-centric values
• AI as a clutch/transmission

The Roles and Questions

The roles related to this discussion in a higher education environment include the following:

• Students. The achievements of this role determine the bottom line of success in higher education.
• Faculty. This role takes on the main responsibility of instructing and mentoring students. This role also defines the overall instructional structure.
• Staff. This role provides the infrastructure that supports education. However, in many instances, this role also directly interacts with students in an instructional capacity.
• Administration. This role manages the resources that facilitate education. The managed resources include finance, physical presence, information system infrastructure, legal, compliance, human resources, etc.

The following are some questions that relate to the use of AI in higher education:

• Academic questions:
  • Academic integrity/honesty.
  • Tutoring and mentoring.
• Life skills:
  • Study habits/skills.
  • Mental well-being.
• Student career/lifelong learning questions:
  • What makes a student employable?
  • Career-related lifelong learning.

The basic question

The fundamental question is how AI can help students achieve long-term career and potentially lifelong objectives. To consider this question, we can think of AI as a smart and knowledgeable person who may or may not act in the best interest of a student. Furthermore, this “person” can be reached 24/7 with a minimal fee of $20/month.

What exactly is “in the best interest of students?”

Student-centric values

What does a specific student value? This is not a question for any institution to answer but rather an inquiry that demands much self-reflection on the part of a student.

AI as a clutch/transmission

If we think of instructors as an engine and students as the wheels of a vehicle, AI is a potential universal transmission.

Instructors and students are individuals; no two are the same. The challenges of education are that how an instructor thinks, presents, and processes may not align with those of a student. As such, LLM and other AI technologies can serve as a “transmission,” so that the engine (the instructor) operates at its peak efficiency while converting the kinetic energy in the most efficient way for a student to benefit from it.

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