In 2016, I created the first racera course for our university. It was based on my book, The bilingual brain. A few years later, they asked me to come and talk to a group of teachers who planned to create their own courses. Before talking, Jeff Morgan, the associated provost for Education Innovation And technology came to present the session on Racera. The first thing he said was that Racera was not going to replace universities. The idea that someone would learn the same thing by itself did not correspond to the story. Students already had it at their disposal. They could simply take a book. The fact that a book had not replaced universities was proof of their value. His point of view was that there was something about the people who gathered to learn together who was irreplaceable.
Today, people have started to wonder if IA will replace higher education. The question is the most urgent in a recent article By James Walsh New York Magazine Entitled “Everyone cheats at the university: Chatgpt has untangled the entire academic project.” And again, I turn to the point that Jeff Morgan did over 10 years ago. If higher education learned to learn for yourself, books would have done work a long time ago.
AI has now introduced the ability to write items entirely alone. Students use it and teachers also use it. I experienced it to generate texts that can offer opinions that are roughly in my voice after prolonged answers sessions. It is remarkable and as a tool, he can open new ways to explore ideas that I would not have explored differently. But after in-depth use, I am sure that it is not a replacement for what I can do for myself. In the end, thought must still come from me. And as many have pointed out, writing is a form of thought.
It is the loss of the writing process where people fear The shortcuts will be short-circuiting our ability to create for ourselves. As a Educators, we have the capacity to improve thought and writing by controlling the amount of technology used in class. Personally, I went to exams written in person. I asked students to present in class. In the fall, I will ask them to write in class, then bring together their own writings in a form of a handwritten final in person. Will they write less? Most likely. Could they have written more with the help of MS Word? Certainly. But I agree with that. The last semester, some of my students came to talk to me, worried about their final presentations. They felt that they were not good enough. And I assured them that they were. One in particular did not like a video she made. I told him that if I wanted a cleaned version of a video, I would watch Netflix or Youtube. What I wanted to do was understand the world from their point of view.
To paraphrase Jeff Morgan again, the fact is that universities are there to bring people together to learn something new. Yes, AI could change that, but it will not replace it. It is up to us as an instructor to control the classroom. This is why I think it's a matter of time before returning to what worked for at least 100 years, paper and pencil.
The world can be as developed and sophisticated as it is. But the classroom belongs to us as human beings. We no longer need to teach people using class technology. We easily available it every day. What distinguishes higher education is to be together in the service of learning something new. As a Educators, we have to work to keep it like this.
At Learnopoly, Finn has championed a mission to deliver unbiased, in-depth reviews of online courses that empower learners to make well-informed decisions. With over a decade of experience in financial services, he has honed his expertise in strategic partnerships and business development, cultivating both a sharp analytical perspective and a collaborative spirit. A lifelong learner, Finn’s commitment to creating a trusted guide for online education was ignited by a frustrating encounter with biased course reviews.