In response to growing artificial intelligence (AI) usage on campus, Stanford is redefining its classroom policies and practices with the goal of better serving students.
The university’s mandatory Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) program is reintroducing paper and pencil assignments this year. Lecturer Sara Mrsny Ph.D. ’19, COLLEGE’s associate director, said this winter’s COLLEGE 102 course will require students to write responses to in-class prompts to ensure that they are not having AI do the work for them.
Similarly, in COLLEGE 101 classes, reading quizzes have been added to the course curriculum. Mrsny said that the assessments are meant to “verify that students are reading the original texts [instructors] assign and not just AI-generated summaries.”
According to Jay Hamilton, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, COLLEGE 102 students actually proposed the reading quizzes themselves. Hamilton said when students were asked how to decrease AI usage on class assignments, their answer was simple: “Give us low-stakes, understanding checks every week so that we can show that we’ve been doing the work.”
“In many classes at Stanford now, you’re more likely in the first five minutes to have a quiz,” Hamilton said.
This year, COLLEGE is also recommending instructors to go “screen-free,” Mrsny said. This approach evolved from last year’s decision to require COLLEGE 101 students to take a blue book exam in place of a traditional write-at-home final essay.
This demand for paper over laptops is coming from both faculty and students, according to Mrsny. Students felt their “quality of discussion was much higher when they were speaking face-to-face undistracted by screens,” she said.
Students similarly “appreciate the opportunity to “unplug” during PWR classes,” Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) Faculty Director Adam Banks, Director Marvin Diogenes ’76 and Associate Director Christine Alfano ’95 wrote in an email to The Daily
According to Diogenes, some lecturers are choosing to add “less tech-dependent writing practices into their PWR classes.” These practices include in-class writing, on-paper annotations and journaling.
Besides changing course policies, programs like COLLEGE have also altered syllabi for classes. “COLLEGE 101 has added a unit dedicated to exploring the effects of AI on education and the good life,” Mrsny said. COLLEGE also includes Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ this year, which Mrsny cites as an “excellent vehicle for exploring issues about the social obligations of technologists.”
These new practices are part of Stanford’s attempt to create a greater academic evolution. Cassandra Volpe Horii, the Associate Vice Provost for Education and Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, wrote in an email to The Daily that she predicts we will see more “AI-specific, human-specific, and combined human/AI learning outcomes in academic programs.”
Such a blended approach between AI and human learning is already being implemented by students before they even arrive at Stanford, though.
“Many students come into PWR classes having used AI for several years as a standard component of their drafting and revision processes,” Diogenes wrote. Some students “have been using AI more as a tutor” to give them guidance on their writing, he said, while others are using it to write their papers for them.
Another reason for the University’s reforms on AI are students’ declining grades. While students’ problem set scores have improved, final exam scores have taken a dip, Hamilton said. According to Hamilton, students are also attending fewer office hours sessions than in previous years.
Hamilton said that students cite convenience and embarrassment as major reasons not to seek help from their professors or teaching assistants.
“‘We’re not going to office hours because we’re using Claude,’” Hamilton said one student reported to him. “‘Claude is awake at 11:30 at night and you’re not. Claude doesn’t judge me.’”
By using Claude or other AI devices, students can lose out on the face-to-face benefit that comes with speaking to faculty members.
“One of the things I’m very concerned about is students are devaluing the chance to connect…with professors,” said Hamilton. “You can’t get mentored if you don’t show up at office hours.”
As Stanford faces increasing qualms over the future of AI and education, Hamilton said one thing is clear: “Humans are losing market share with our students.”