Cana Fuest, PhD Candidate

My primary motivation for studying artifical intelligence has from the beginning been due to an interest in making it work for me as an educator. Traditionally, higher education has utilized teaching assistants to do the tedious tasks (such as grading) for university professors. However, in my experience, it is sometimes more work to teach a person to do the thing that I have in my mind to do. It also takes time. A machine, on the other hand, can be prompted to do almost precisely what I want it to do in less time. [By the way, I see the irony here of a teacher who becomes impatient with teaching another person.]

I am not suggesting that schools should abolish human teaching assistants. After all, the value of a human being outweighs a machine on multiple levels. Additionally, the opportunity to gain teaching experience is valuable. Perhaps the answer is for faculty to become more adept at prompting machines, and teaching our assistants the same ability. The more we can automate boring, time-consuming tasks the more time we can spend reading, researching, and investing in our students.

I still say that we need more models trained on precise teaching and learning strategies so that we can use these machines to assist with pedagogical recommendations and course design. I know the tools exist but I have yet to find one that impresses me and does what I want it to do. For now, I will continue to test various applications and hope that access to the more desirable features won’t cost too much.