Is It the Beginning of the End for Higher Education?
Decentering Grades to Discover Meaning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Editor’s Note: This post is a part of a series of responses to “From Coercion to Fascination: Grades, Vulnerability, and Responsibility” curated by Alessandro Rovati, the Associate Editor of the Journal of Moral Theology.
In the last year, I have sat through hours of training sessions, conversations, conferences, and faculty email chains that are wrestling with the task of education in the changing technological landscape of artificial intelligence (AI). There have been a wide range of reactions to the changes: some are eager about the new horizons of learning that this technology opens to students, and others are disturbed about how this technology may discourage free and original thinking. Despite the wide variety of reactions, the consensus reached was that AI demands us to re-think what we are doing in the classroom. Previous assignments that focused on summary analysis of complex texts or even rote memorization of definitions tested by multiple choice questions now seem somewhat obsolete. How can learning still be possible when, as my students have said to me, “Chat can do it for me”?
I have to admit I am skeptical about this narrative of AI destroying higher education. Is AI really to blame? Or, is it making the lack of vision for learning and purpose of higher education simply more apparent?
When I read Heron and Rovati’s vision of education, I was struck by how many of the conversations I have been having about higher education and AI did not have this kind of dynamic vision. According to Heron and Rovati, the purpose of education is “to offer them [students] a working hypothesis, a way to look at and understand reality and everything in it. It is to provide them with an orientation about the ultimate meaning of things, the fulfillment and destiny towards which humans strive” (115). This vision of education does not emerge from ideology but Christian faith. The event of the Incarnation demands that I consider reality anew. For this vision to succeed, education cannot be a one-sided activity. On the part of educators, it calls for accompaniment and on-going conversation. On the part of students, it demands that they have personal responsibility to “commit themselves to such a journey of discernment and discovery” (119).
As powerful as AI can be, it does not offer the formation for students to press into understanding reality. In my experience, AI has simply increased the temptation to not take responsibility for education. In the conversations I have been having, this temptation resides both on the part of professors who are stretched for time and energy, given our many professional commitments to the academy and institutions we serve, as well as to our students. It takes a great deal of courage and responsibility to probe into reality in the way Heron and Rovati describe. Asking what the meaning of my life is not a task for the faint hearted.
To achieve this vision of education in the age of AI, we must recover and cultivate a sense of responsibility for education both on the side of educators and students. To be fair, this has been a challenge long before AI. According to Heron and Rovati, the contemporary emphasis put on grades in education has not only discouraged but also incentivized a lack of responsibility for learning. By motivating students through external punishments (“bad grade”) and rewards (“good grade”), grades are used by educators to coerce certain behaviors from students (eg. “If you do all the reading, you will get a good grade” or “If you miss more than eight classes, you will get a bad grade”). Rather than facilitating a “journey of discernment and discovery,” grades counterproductively distract students from taking on the responsibility necessary for learning. Students focus on achieving the reward or avoiding the punishment. Learning as coming to understand reality becomes the educator’s youthful naivete or an idealistic pipe dream (109-111).
I was skeptical about this argument until I thought about my own experience of education: I can tell you what my worst grade was since middle school (and even what class it was and the teacher’s name), but I cannot tell you what I learned in most of my highest scoring courses or how they contributed to who I am today. In implementing some of the alternative forms of assessment of student learning mentioned by Heron and Rovati in the last two years, I am convinced that they are on to something.
I have been facilitating student learning through contract grading. I ask students to first set their own desired learning outcome: what kind of learning do they want to be responsible for this semester? Do they want the kind of mastery of the subject to be able to tutor another student or someone who is not familiar with the topic? Or, are they merely aiming for what I call “big picture learning,” or enough knowledge to present a general overview of the topic? Then, I make the promise to help them attain this learning outcome by providing them with feedback. Rather than using grades to punish or reward students, we use them together to discuss how they are reaching their own learning goals.
Contract grading is not a solve-all. But, I do believe it encourages and incentivizes the right things: namely, learning and responsibility. I no longer feel like I am the gate-keeper to graduation or acceptance to graduate school. I am a collaborator. Without the pressures of the traditional grading system, my students and I have been much more willing to take the risks and sacrifices that learning requires. The amount of work my students put into revising their work to achieve their desired learning outcome is inspiring. I love how proud they are of their work at the conclusion of the class. What I previously thought was an educator’s rosy optimism and idealistic vision has become my experience.
As AI continues to present opportunities to maximize efficiency through its rapid completion of tasks and dispensing answers to a wide variety of questions, it will also continue to pose the illusion that being an educator is to give answers and that being educated is about having answers. How will higher education respond to the need to create a learning environment that prioritizes discovery over having answers? At minimum, I do believe we must de-center grades from education. In doing so through contract grading, my students and I have both begun to enjoy learning again. As one of my students said to me recently, “Chat could get an A, but it can’t actually learn.” Because of my students, I have a lot of hope that this is not the beginning of the end but rather a new start for higher education.
Editor’s Note: For more conversations with the Journal of Moral Theology’s authors and responses to their essays, check out HERE.
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