How AI is Changing the Student Experience at LSU - GovTech

He displayed an aphorism on the board, his preferred style of short writing to teach students nowadays rather than the essay.

“‘A great photographer insists on writing poems,’” one student read aloud to the class. “‘A brilliant essayist insists on writing novels. A singer with a voice like an angel insists on singing only her own, terrible songs.’”

The students spent the rest of the hour pondering what the short quote meant and how it applied to their lives. There were no laptops with quiz questions to answer, no phones to take notes on.

“I don’t do anything more than they can read or write on a single notecard in a single day,” Weerts said.

Though he doesn’t suggest every class go analog, Weerts said the approach works for his students to “get them into their own minds,” particularly in the age of artificial intelligence tools.

“They’re cool with it,” Weerts said, “because I think deep down, they want some kind of experience, the same idealized American college experience that we had.”

As AI becomes ubiquitous on campus, more classes at LSU may follow Weerts’ lead.

His approach is one of many among faculty to weather the revolution in higher education brought by powerful tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. Some, like Weerts, remove technology from the classroom altogether and focus on what can be completed in a single period. Others inject AI in small doses, challenging students to use it for certain parts of an assignment while understanding its limitations. Some even embrace the technology and require students to use it.

And there are faculty who ban AI while otherwise keeping their course the same, computers and all — a stance that has caused frustration from students.

“Since we have our own devices, then there’s no way for them to know,” sophomore Noah Prestidge said. “People are still going to use it.”

MAJORITY OF STUDENTS USE AI IN SOME CAPACITY, SURVEY FINDS

LSU does not have an institutional policy on AI in the classroom but says that “using AI tools without permission or in an improper way” violates the Code of Student Conduct. Generally, the university recommends professors set their own guidelines based on the subject area.

“Faculty need to learn from their students,” said Emily Elliott, who was appointed as the inaugural Provost’s Fellow for Artificial Intelligence in April. “Students need to learn from their faculty. And we need to be talking to each other in each given course: What are the expectations for the learning? Where are the ways these tools can help you? Where are the ways that maybe they can hurt you?”

A survey conducted by the Faculty Senate GenAI Committee in the spring found that 80 percent of students use generative AI tools, whether daily, weekly, monthly or rarely. About one in five reported never using it.

Mike Holt, head of research and instruction services at LSU Libraries and a member of the committee, cautioned against extrapolating from the survey due to a low response rate.

“As much as I would like to, I can’t go out and survey every single student at LSU,” Holt said. “But I think there is a lot a skepticism amongst this age cohort of AI.”

Students have expressed concerns over the environmental impact of data centers, the potential for inaccuracies or “hallucinations,” and the possible disciplinary actions against them if an assignment gets marked as AI by a flagging tool. Still, many said they see it as an inevitable part of their working future and believe the university has a responsibility to teach them how to use it effectively and ethically.

Several students said AI has made their education feel more valuable, forcing them to decide how to use the tools appropriately and when to learn without their aid.

“It’s definitely made me more mindful and also appreciative of education in general,” said senior Aaron Lomastro, vice president of the Student Alliance for AI Regulation. “Before that, school was just something that you had to do. You had to do your homework. I didn’t have the option to go put it into ChatGPT. But now students are able to do that. It’s not just something we can ignore, but it’s also something that we can’t just call evil.”

THE WILD WEST

A student’s experience with AI varies widely depending on their major and the department they take the most courses in.

Environmental science professor Linda Bui said she tries to be transparent about her application of the technology — such as making her syllabus more readable — in exchange for students being transparent with her. For classes where it is allowed in some contexts, like her Applied Ecology course, she expects them to disclose how they used the tools. She also instructs them on how to form prompts and where AI can lead them astray, she said.

"The students really responded to that,” Bui said. “I’m trying to model what I think is the ethical use of AI while I also teach them.”

Many of her classes make it difficult for students to abuse AI, she said. With an experiment-based assignment, students write up their observations and speak in class about their findings. If they use AI to correct their grammar or organize their thoughts, she is “not mad about that,” she said.

She continues to evolve in her thinking about AI and the best way to implement it in the classroom, she said. In a course evaluation, one student wrote she was “too permissible” with the technology.

“They felt like the other students overrelied on that, and I paid attention to that,” Bui said. “AI is changing quickly. I’m really thinking about it a lot. I think about it probably every single time I’m starting to think about teaching.”

Many students said they did not expect or want the university to create a general institutional policy on AI because of the rapid pace at which it is developing and how differently it can be applied depending on the course.

“I think that a blanket policy would do injustice to both the teacher and the student,” student body president Ben Barousse said.

WHAT THE UNIVERSITY IS DOING

LSU’s most recent effort toward training students on the technology came this semester with the launch of a free AI fundamentals course.

The course, AI Literacy Essentials, is available to all students, faculty, staff and the public through LSU Online and covers ethical use, academic integrity, how to verify information and practical skills. Lomastro, who has advocated for the university to get more involved in preparing students for AI in their workplaces, said it is a major step in making students more AI literate.

Students often fall back on tools like ChatGPT or Gemini as a “crutch” without awareness of their weaknesses, he said.

“I felt that if students had a better understanding of how these large language models work and operate and how to use them as more of a guide and a teacher, then they could set themselves up for success better in the future,” Lomastro said.

Prestidge said more education on the tools would be helpful. A sophomore, he avoided using it last year out of fear of being penalized or being given false information by the large language model, or LLM. He experimented with it in the summer, he said, and now regularly uses it to help him study before exams. His grades have improved — straight A’s so far, he said.

He said students who depend on LLMs to write papers for them or otherwise utilize them unethically most likely do so because they run out of time for the assignment and feel pressured.

But for students who apply an LLM as a study aid, he said, it functions more as a “thinking buddy.”

“It can know where you fall short,” Prestidge said. “It can keep a memory of that. I can go there and I can ask for a test, ‘What things am I most slacking on right now?’ And it’ll tell me, ‘You’re using this equation wrong, or you drop these coefficients, or you’re forgetting this part of the chapter from the textbook.’ It just helps so much more to know the way you think.”

'TIDAL WAVE'

As the class period ended, the students retrieved their phones from their bags, checking the notifications they missed.

When he first started teaching short writing, Weerts allowed the students to type their responses on their phones. But he found they looked more “disconnected” with their devices out, he said.

“It’s creepy, how much the affect changes instantly and the whole atmosphere of the room,” Weerts said. “It makes me sad.”

He called AI and its implications a “tidal wave” that will transform the students’ lives. The analog hour he carves out for them three times a week is his way of showing them how to get their bearings in that upending, he said.

“I think to prepare for the future, we actually have to go into the past in one sense, and that is to sharpen the tools that we do have,” Weerts said. “I believe that leaning on those tools, our own minds, what they can think about, analyze and create, is going to be the best preparation for the future.”

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