"When ChatGPT burst onto the scene, much of academia reacted not with curiosity but with fear. Not fear of what artificial intelligence might enable students to learn, but fear of losing control over how learning has traditionally been policed. Almost immediately, professors declared generative AI "poison," warned that it would destroy critical thinking, and demanded outright bans across campuses, a reaction widely documented by Inside Higher Ed."
"This was never really about pedagogy. It was about authority. The integrity narrative masks a control problem The response has been so chaotic that researchers have already documented the resulting mess: contradictory policies, vague guidelines, and enforcement mechanisms that even faculty struggle to understand, as outlined in a widely cited paper on institutional responses to ChatGPT. Universities talk endlessly about academic integrity while quietly admitting they have no shared definition of what integrity means in an AI-augmented world."
Academic institutions reacted to ChatGPT with fear focused on preserving control rather than exploring pedagogical benefits. Faculty responses emphasized bans, oral exams, and handwritten assessments as means to police student work. Institutional policies became contradictory, vague, and difficult to enforce, with no shared definition of academic integrity in an AI-augmented context. Important learning factors such as motivation, autonomy, pacing, and safe opportunities to fail received little attention. Institutions prioritized surveillance over adaptive learning. Evidence shows intelligent tutoring systems can personalize instruction, provide immediate feedback, and offer practice opportunities that large classrooms cannot, revealing a disconnection between policy and capability.
Read at Fast Company
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