Author: NCFDD
Artificial intelligence is reshaping higher education. Tools that can generate text, summarize sources, or analyze data are now freely available to anyone with an internet connection. For faculty, this shift brings both opportunity and uncertainty. Will AI accelerate research or diminish originality? Will it enrich teaching or undermine student learning?
The answer depends less on the technology itself and more on how faculty choose to use it. By approaching AI critically and intentionally, you can gain the benefits of efficiency and innovation without sacrificing the qualities that make your scholarship and teaching distinct.
The Promise and Peril of AI in Academia
AI offers obvious advantages. It can help:
- Streamline administrative burdens by drafting syllabi frameworks, rubrics, or recommendation letters.
- Accelerate research by scanning large bodies of literature, coding qualitative data, or visualizing trends.
- Support teaching by generating discussion questions, case studies, or practice problems tailored to student needs.
At the same time, these tools carry risks:
- Plagiarism and academic integrity when students submit AI-generated work without acknowledgment.
- Bias and inequity when algorithms reproduce the blind spots of their training data.
Loss of scholarly voice if faculty lean too heavily on machine-generated text. - Erosion of trust if AI use is hidden or inconsistent across a campus.
Navigating these contradictions requires faculty to actively shape the role of AI rather than passively responding to it.
Practical Strategies to Engage AI Responsibly
1. Use AI for scaffolding, not substitution
Let AI help with outlines, brainstorming, or generating alternatives, but do the intellectual heavy lifting yourself. This keeps your voice at the center of your writing and ensures that your arguments are grounded in disciplinary expertise.
2. Pair efficiency with reflection
If AI saves you an hour by creating a rubric draft, invest that hour in higher-value work: mentoring a student, revising an article, or designing an innovative assignment. Efficiency is not the end goal; it is a means to free time for what matters most.
3. Establish norms of transparency
Faculty can model responsible AI use by acknowledging when a tool was involved in their process. Similarly, they can set classroom expectations that clarify when AI is acceptable, when it is not, and how its use should be documented.
4. Teach students to critique AI output
Students will use AI whether faculty endorse it or not. Incorporating critical reflection into assignments—such as comparing AI-generated summaries to peer-reviewed research—helps students see the strengths and limitations of these tools.
5. Ask critical questions before relying on AI
- Does this tool help me accomplish something that aligns with my goals?
- Is the output accurate and bias-aware?
- Am I making my own intellectual and ethical choices, or outsourcing them?
- How will I communicate my use of AI to colleagues and students?
Protecting What Cannot Be Automated
Even as AI grows more capable, certain qualities remain uniquely human:
- The ability to interpret context and nuance.
- The capacity to make ethical decisions.
- The skill of mentoring and building relationships.
- The creativity to generate original insights across disciplines.
AI can process information, but it cannot provide wisdom. It can generate text, but it cannot replicate the scholarly voice developed through years of study, teaching, and lived experience. Faculty remain the stewards of meaning, judgment, and academic integrity.
Continue the Conversation: Watch the Webinar Recording
The tensions around AI cannot be resolved in isolation; they require space for dialogue, experimentation, and even a bit of discomfort. That’s why we hosted our recent session: The AIs Go Marching On: Finding Our Way with AI in Education
AI has arrived in classrooms whether we invited it or not. In this interactive session, faculty wrestle with the real tensions AI introduces into teaching and learning. Together, we explore practical considerations, try hands-on activities, and examine ways to guide students toward thoughtful, responsible engagement.
Watch the recording now to join the conversation and apply these insights to your teaching.
