John Warner
Inside Higher Ed
Originally posted 11 Dec 24
Here is an excerpt:
A PR release from the UCLA Newsroom about a comparative lit class that is using a “UCLA-developed AI system” to substitute for labor that was previously done by faculty or teaching assistants lays out the whole deal. The course textbook has been generated from the professor’s previous course materials. Students will interact with the AI-driven courseware. A professor and teaching assistants will remain, for now, but for how long?
The professor argues—I would say rationalizes—that this is good for students because “Normally, I would spend lectures contextualizing the material and using visuals to demonstrate the content. But now all of that is in the textbook we generated, and I can actually work with students to read the primary sources and walk them through what it means to analyze and think critically.”
(Note: Whenever I see someone touting the benefit of an AI-driven practice as good pedagogy, I wonder what is stopping them from doing it without the AI component, and the answer is usually nothing.)
An additional apparent benefit is “that the platform can help professors ensure consistent delivery of course material. Now that her teaching materials are organized into a coherent text, another instructor could lead the course during the quarters when Stahuljak isn’t teaching—and offer students a very similar experience.”
This article argues that he survival of college faculty in an AI-driven world depends on recognizing themselves as laborers and resisting trends that devalue their work. The rise of adjunctification—prioritizing cheaper, non-tenured faculty over tenured ones—offers a cautionary tale. Similarly, the adoption of generative AI in teaching risks diminishing the human role in education. Examples like UCLA’s AI-powered courseware illustrate how faculty labor becomes interchangeable, paving the way for automation and eroding the value of teaching. Faculty must push back against policies, such as shifts in copyright, that enable these trends, emphasizing the irreplaceable value of their labor and resisting practices that jeopardize the future of academic teaching and learning.