From regulation to integration: A year of learning

By Julie Zwart, INTO OSU

Last fall, just before Halloween, I joked to a couple of colleagues that if I were going to dress up for Halloween, it would be fitting for me to go as the AI Police. I had just finished a week of policing students. During three of my writing classes, I monitored students as they wrote, by hand, for two long hours, drafts of an essay. Next to them were their sources printed out. In each of those class periods, I didn’t teach; I only monitored students as they wrote, sometimes circling the room to look over their shoulders, sometimes standing in the back of the room for a bird’s-eye view. It seemed the most effective way to ensure students didn’t use AI to write their essay drafts. I spent about 6 hours that week policing and musing that there had to be a better way. In 2023, Edward Maloney created a framework which identified four stages or approaches to AI use in higher education. The first stage, Regulate, is a stage characterized by restriction and prevention of its use; this is followed by Adapt, Integrate and Reimagine. That week, I was solidly in the Regulate stage. 

Fast forward to the end of the spring term. For the past 8 months, thanks to a mini-grant from the Center for Teaching and Learning, I’ve been creating AI modules that will help facilitate appropriate AI use in and out of the classroom. The goal of the modules is to bring international students, who came to OSU with different levels of exposure to and ideas about AI, to a place similar to their domestic peers. The modules consist of lesson plans of various lengths and depths that INTO OSU instructors can use in their classes to get students thinking critically about AI and its uses. 

After meetings with instructors in my department, attending a conference that had a large focus on AI and teaching, sitting through many sessions during AI week, and participating in a faculty learning community, I’ve come to a few small realizations:

• People don’t agree. Five instructors teaching the same course will have five opinions on if, when, or how the use of AI is acceptable. 
• Restricting AI use isn’t always possible, or even the best way. We’re here to prepare students for the future, and that future will surely include AI. 
• Talking about AI with students, yet discouraging its use can be parallel conversations. We can talk extensively about it and use it only sometimes. 
• Students want guidance from their instructors beyond a syllabus statement. This will always be a conversation worth having. 
• We, the collective “we,” educators, parents, and dare I say everyone, are questioning and trying to make sense of AI and what it will do to our current systems. A lot of people will claim to have answers, but do they? 

Over the past 8 months, I can confidently say that I’ve moved up in Maloney’s stages from Regulate to Adapt and I’m venturing into Integrate. In my classes, this means talking about AI a lot, suggesting ways students can use it, letting students know how I use it, and all learning together. And I will not dress up as The AI Police next Halloween. At the same time, I haven’t come to any sweeping conclusions; I did get many conversations started in my department, and they are conversations that will continue. At the heart of it is the question of “how can we do better for our students?” and that’s what we’ll keep talking about. 

About the author: Julie Zwart is a senior instructor I at INTO OSU. Outside of work, she enjoys outdoor activities, travel, and learning about how to make good coffee.