In the spring semester, Sam Bonsall taught a research class for undergrads that serves as a “launch pad” to help them write an upcoming honors thesis. He had taught the class before, but the difference this time was that he incorporated artificial intelligence or AI into the class.
“Every assignment has an aspect of something they need to do on their own, they need to use AI, and then they need to do a critical reflection on what was kind of the good, the bad, and the ugly about the AI," said Bonsall, the Deloitte & Touche Teaching Excellence Professor and a professor of accounting in the Smeal College of Business at Penn State.
It’s part of helping the students learn how AI can be helpful — or not — at plowing through large amounts of data and crunching numbers, or getting feedback on their ideas. But also learning what mistakes AI might make.
It comes as artificial Intelligence has landed on college campuses, including at Penn State. While some professors are fighting it, others are trying to teach students the right way to use AI, including its strengths and weaknesses.
“We use AI for almost every assignment that we have," said Alex Dubow, a student in Bonsall's class who's majoring in supply chain management.
He broke it down for a non-AI expert: The class is using a platform called BoodleBox that gives them access to AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. They’re using those tools to help develop their thesis topics.
“With that, one of the questions that we do is we come up with an idea on how we will build this model for our thesis and we put it into Boodle Box — I use Claude for it — and it'll help us identify our strengths and weaknesses and then help us adapt it to make it a better thesis and a better proposal," Dubow said.
The students were also learning about the downsides to AI — like when it hallucinates.
“We had some articles that pop up and they weren't actually real," explained Temi Bola-Adeyemo, a finance major.
“Sometimes even the dates, attributions, people quoted, they were all wrong. AI kind of hallucinated and made them up," she said. "I feel like that’s another issue people need to be careful about.”
Still, the students said, they like how AI helps them study, saves them some time from slogging through more mundane tasks and gives them feedback on their work.
“I think that it is important that teachers push this forward because it is a valuable skill you can have and it's not the AI that'll take the jobs. It's the people that can use the AI that'll take the jobs," said Gavin Rawski, who is studying actuarial science.
Bonsall’s class was part of a pilot program in Smeal College’s broader initiative to incorporate AI into its classes, research and programs. It comes as Penn State and other universities are trying to figure out the best ways to educate students and faculty about AI, what it does, how it could be used and how it should not be used.
Bonsall said along with giving students feedback and helping analyze large amounts of data, AI could free up more time for deeper thinking. And in the long run it could help students dive into a quickly changing job market.
Still, Bonsall says, AI has limits.
“It can't substitute for getting base level knowledge. So when you're taking your first accounting class or your first chemistry class, you need to learn the basics," Bonsall said. "But by the time I get the students in the research course, I think they have a knowledge of their field. So they have an ability to critically evaluate the AI and the quality of the outputs they're getting.”
At Penn State, the administration has identified AI as a priority — recruiting faculty with expertise in it, creating a new vice provost position to oversee AI and starting a literacy program to help faculty, staff and students develop a basic understanding of AI.
But the flood of AI into higher ed is raising concerns. At a faculty senate meeting earlier this year, one professor put it this way: “In the liberal arts and the humanities, it’s going to be catastrophic.”
One non-scientific survey from the American Association of Colleges and Universities and Elon University of faculty around the country found that nearly 80% said cheating has increased since AI tools became available.
Dubow, who’s studying supply chain management, said he had an intro class in another college and the average grade on the midterm was a near-perfect 98%.
“And not a lot of people come to class," he said. "You could assume people are just copying and pasting the questions into like ChatGPT and having it give the answer.”
He said he thinks if you’re taking the class, you might as well not have Chat GPT take it for you.
Surveys have found that both faculty and students worry that AI could make learning too shallow.
Michelle Darnell, Smeal College’s director of honor and integrity and director of its Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility, said it’s actually refreshing that both faculty and students have those concerns.
“Because I think that sometimes faculty might assume that students are just happy that they can find an easier way to get through the necessary assignments when in fact the vast majority of students are really concerned about making sure that their knowledge is very deep," Darnell said.
She thinks it’s educators’ job to give students opportunities to develop the skills to be ethical leaders in their future professional lives.
“I'm always of the opinion that technology itself is neutral. It really is going to depend on how we choose to use it," she said.
Bonsall, the professor piloting teaching with AI, said the same way having basic computer coding skills might have given a business student a leg up in the job market in the past, now knowing how to use AI could be like a “superpower.”
“I think if you're the person who can go into your organization and educate the boomers who have heard of ChatGPT, may or may not have used it, but don't understand what it can do to improve the efficiency of existing workflows or enhance workflows — those students are going to find themselves advancing more quickly," he said.
But, Bonsall quickly added that he reserves the right to be totally wrong. When it comes to AI, things are moving too quickly to be sure.
