Above the Fold: Artificial intelligence and higher education

Above the Fold is The Daily Iowan's weekly deep-dive podcast into our story of the week.This episode details how professors are responding to AI technology.Russell Chun, associate professor at Hofstra University’s Lawrence Herbert School of Communication in New York, said it is difficult to create one policy to regulate AI for a whole university because every discipline is different."I think it's exciting technology, personally, and I think that we kind of all have to and there's so many use cases that are still coming out, right? People are still figuring out, oh, how can I use it? How should I use it? And I think we have to keep an open mind," Chun said.Several University of Iowa professors have started incorporating AI into classes.Pamela Bourjaily, UI Tippie College of Business associate professor of accounting instruction, created an assignment last spring where Chat GPT generated a memo and students had to revise it using ChatGPT or on their own."Over the summer, I looked at the results, and I learned that the students who performed highest on that assignment, either did not use chat GPT, they did their own writing, or they did a lot of prompting of the ChatGPT and of treating it like a Google search."Tyler Bell, an assistant professor in the University of Iowa College of Engineering, created an entire course about AI's uses and ethical concerns.Above the Fold is hosted and produced by Natalie Dunlap.