TR PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM On Tuesday, during the club’s weekly meeting (noon) in Desjardins Hall on the campus of Marshalltown Community College, Chair Jean Croom spoke to the Marshalltown Rotary Club about how artificial intelligence has impacted education so far.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and how it is being integrated into education was a major topic at Tuesday’s meeting of the Marshalltown Rotary Club.
Gene Croom, 58, president of Judson University in Elgin, Illinois, was returning guest of Rotarian Tom McCoy. As in 2023, Croom’s speech focused on AI and the impact it is having.
“I guess one of the reasons I came back is to test whether my predictions about artificial intelligence have actually come true,” he said.
Croom said the prediction would have been hard to miss, given his interest in AI and the fact that he teaches it in three classes: education, marketing and journalism.
“I see AI at work in those three areas specifically,” he says, “but it also affects all of us and how we respond to it.”
AI has had a major impact on education. Last year, Crume predicted that virtual classes would become more accessible. He never imagined some of the virtual learning activities would happen at such a rapid pace.
“Universities are now using AI tools to match students with professors, teachers and educators that are tailored to them,” Croom says.
The technology will allow educators to focus more on interactive teaching methods, he said. They’ll be able to input their own knowledge and experiences into the AI. Students can then ask questions of the AI-generated image of the educator. That’s something Croom finds intriguing, since humans are designed for human interaction. He’d like to see data showing whether it’s more effective.
“When you interact with students online, it feels like a professor is speaking to them in person,” he said. “All of the student data is loaded and we provide an AI interface to interact with them, which makes the learning experience more personalized, engaging and effective for students.”
This could mean that students could sign up for classes online, take them whenever they want, and interact with a professor’s avatar, who, if the student’s information is included in the AI, will talk to them personally about their performance.
“When it comes to education, it’s a totally different proposition,” he said.
Croom said AI can also create generative instructors that foster and improve feelings about learning. Researchers have found that better feelings create motivation, and students also have better opinions of AI instructors, he said.
“We’re quickly moving into a field where avatars are teaching students, not just at the university level but also taking classes, auditing, getting certifications,” Croom said.
The technology has also influenced students’ writing and composition. To highlight how that happened, he asked the students if they knew about cursive writing.
“You’d be hard pressed to find a young person today who actually knows what the word cursive means, much less anyone who can write in cursive,” Croom said. “We don’t teach it that way anymore, and haven’t for years.”
Krumme told Rotarians about a new app developed by Jordan Peterson called “Essay App,” which he said helps people get their ideas down on paper, reword them, reject what doesn’t work and keep what’s great.
“What you’re left with in the end are great ideas, powerfully written and generated by artificial intelligence,” he said.
There is an ongoing debate about the ethics of those who use AI to write articles. Crume said media companies have been using AI to write articles, especially financial articles, since 2014. The difference is that more writing applications now leverage AI.
Croom, who uses the tool himself, said he had previously had students input their exams into ChatGPT to see how many answers the AI could get right. It took the students 90 minutes to input the questions in a specific way so that the AI could get them right.
“Input equals output, right?” Croom asks. “She has to keep refining her questions, and even as a student she said, ‘I think it’s easier to study for exams.'”
He frequently uses ChatGPT to see what and how people can write with it. Crume found that he had to upload parameters multiple times to get the desired results.
“Generalization is what AI is good at right now, but it’s growing very quickly and becoming more specific,” he said.
Programs like the Essay App can change the way we teach writing. Crume told his students as they sat in his classroom that he expects society to return to more oral reports and handwritten responses in class. He’s already seeing professors insist that quizzes should be oral.
“Classrooms are changing and it’s going back to the old ways of teaching, where you stand up and you respond and you answer specific questions,” Croom said.
Croom predicted that AI will also redefine the value of college credentials and degrees, although those who earn them will still have a tangible, economic impact on their lives, he said.
He says there are three steps to getting an advanced degree: First, learn a trade while you’re in high school. Then, go to a community college and get an associate’s degree. This will cut the cost of your education by 60 percent, and you can be more selective about what you want to do.
“We’re seeing AI-based credentialing take many different forms,” Croom says. “AI is definitely impacting all of education, from primary education to trade schools to community colleges.”
Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.
