Having been thinking about, writing, and speaking publicly about generative AI for one year, we wanted to look back at our first post called “Responses to ChatGPT”, which we published on January 26, 2023. What did we get right? What do we know now that we didn’t know then? And what might the next year of AI in higher education look like?

What did we get right? We’re both humble people but in this case we’ll say “nailed it.”

November 17, the Friday before Thanksgiving, a shock came out of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. The board of directors had fired Sam Altman CEO and public face of the company. What? Jaw drop for sure. This post is not about the craptastic mismanagement of the company that produces ChatGPT and DALL-E, which have basically become the Kleanex of generative AI products. Rather I take this whole episode as a warning, as a disruption within a disruption.

I was on the Morning Show - Newstalk with Scott Michaels and Mike Baca taking about the impact of ChatGPT on higher education and how professors and administrators are approaching generative AI more broadly. Have a listen on the page.

Zach and I were interviewed by Muna Sadek from KRCR Chanel 7 in Chico about ChatGPT and its impacts on higher education.

Professors Nik Janos and Zach Justus held a ChatGPT workshop for students Friday. They say their goal is to hear insights from students on how the technology has been changing their approach to education. They one of the most common questions they are asked is whether use of the website makes a student guilty of cheating.

When Zach and I talk to colleagues about ChatGPT and other generative AIs, the conversation always includes the topic of plagiarism and cheating. For many different reasons students cheat and for many different reasons instructors and students are concerned about cheating and plagiarism. This post isn’t about the politics and best practices of academic integrity. Rather it is a cautious warning about the quest to find a technical fix to cheating with AI. As soon as ChatGPT was released in the fall of 2022, individuals and companies have been building AI detection tools. These tools began to roll out in 2023. This is the arms race that we theorized in our first post in February 2022.

Previously we covered what you need to know if you are starting from scratch with Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education. We mentioned our intention to follow up with action steps for the Fall. In researching we found an excellent guide posted on 8/2 by Inara Scott who serves as the Senior Associate Dean in the College of Business at Oregon State. We strongly recommend reading her well thought out piece. Several of the points she makes mirrored our own draft and we want to point you to her work. In correspondence with Scott we received permission to link and republish sections of the article. Here are some key highlights from her article.

It’s summer and as professors that means we’re not on the clock as it were. Zach and I have been posting nearly 1-2 per weeks since February, trying to stay on top of all the changes to ChatGPT and its impact on higher education. So, we’re taking a summer break but we’ll be back in mid to late August with new content with some super relevant topics for the start of the new fall semester.

As Zach wrote last week, one of the most common responses we get from faculty when showing them ChatGPT or talking about it is that we need to move away from analytical assignments to personal reflection assignments, or at least combine them. Some faculty think that we can out smart ChatGPT or they think there are truly human things that ChatGPT can’t produce. As Zach outlined, it is becoming increasingly clear that this is not true.