Artificial intelligence (AI) affects many aspects of life, especially in a classroom setting, but is it all bad? In departments like nursing and architecture, according to professors, it can be vital, even in a classroom setting. They shared that in the education field, it can be a necessary thing to utilize and discuss.
According to Keene State College architecture professor Fernando Del Ama Gonzalo, AI cuts out the beginning and end of the architecture process, allowing the architect to just do the design part. “AI triggers the ideas and helps get the final picture,” Gonzalo said, “AI is great for the bureaucratic aspects.”
Gonzalo also said that AI is currently incapable of doing the actual design work; that while you can tell AI to design a building, it may give you something that may look right at first, but upon closer look it will not take long to find a flaw.
Paul Fowler, who works in architectural design, requires students in his junior-level class to use AI as a “research coach” to guide them on what questions to ask for a research assignment. However, in the rest of his assignments, students can only use AI if they state that they used AI, what questions they asked to get the result they received and also use human feedback from the professors.
While AI has some positives in this field, it also has some negatives. Gonzalo stated that “this is the first time in teaching history where the student knows more about the technology than the teachers.”
Previously, when any technology was used in a field, a professor knew much more than the student, because they had spent so much time working in that field, according to Gonzalo. Because AI is so new, the students now know more about it in most cases than the teacher. Gonzalo said that before long, he started seeing things in assignments that he did not know how to do.
“It’s changing the way we teach because we can learn from students,” he said.
While teachers learning from their students is good, AI also could allow students to use shortcuts and skip steps that are necessary. In architecture and many other fields, if you skip the human feedback, the project does not work.
Similarly, in the nursing field, AI plays a big and important role. According to Sharon Breidt, director of nursing at Keene State, nursing utilizes patient portals that AI systems organize and customize, making the portals “more applicable to each patient.” Healthcare AI can also be used to diagnose conditions before humans can, allowing for earlier intervention.
However, if these AI systems go unchecked by humans, these systems can make “false or incorrect diagnoses,” causing the patient “undue stress and increased costs,” according to Breidt. Even with these drawbacks of AI, these systems are still vital to the nursing field.
AI affects the field of education much differently. AI does not run any necessary processes for education as it does in architecture and nursing, but it is still something Professor Chris Parsons thinks needs to be talked about and used in the classroom for “professional preparation.” Parsons says that in the education field, AI needs to be talked about because education professors need to make sure our teaching candidates are “ready to work with, or not work with, students on AI.” Educating students on AI prepares them to decide what they want to do with AI in their own classrooms in the future.
“It almost doesn’t matter if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, or the drawbacks outweigh the benefits, because it’s here and it’s not going away,” Parsons said.
Alexis Caouette can be contacted at
Alexis.Caouette@keene.edu
