AI has exposed age-old problems with university coursework | Letter

Letter: Instead of romanticising a pre-AI past, universities should use this moment to rethink what they actually want students to demonstrate, says Dr Nafisa Baba-Ahmed

The frustration many academics are expressing about artificial intelligence and critical thinking is understandable (‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI, 10 March). But from my experience working with students on academic writing, blaming AI risks masking a problem that universities have lived with for years.

In my work with students, I have long seen the ways in which thinking can be outsourced when assessment allows it: essay mills, shared past papers, model essays passed between cohorts, or heavy reliance on tutors and friends to structure assignments. Artificial intelligence did not invent this behaviour. It has simply industrialised a shortcut that already existed.

What AI has done, in my view, is expose how fragile the traditional essay in a coursework format has always been as a proxy for intellectual engagement. If a piece of writing can be produced convincingly without the thinking behind it, the issue lies less with the technology than with how learning and assessment are designed.

Instead of romanticising a pre-AI past that was never quite as pure as we imagine, universities should use this moment to rethink what they actually want students to demonstrate: evidence of reflection, interpretation and intellectual struggle rather than a piece of overly refined work presented as the end product.
Dr Nafisa Baba-Ahmed
London