\n<\/p>\n
In the late 1990s, a group of commuters would board the early-morning Amtrak train from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. They\u2019d sit in the first car behind the locomotive, enjoying communal, consensual silence. Eventually and with the conductor\u2019s help, their car was officially designated as a noise-free zone. Soon after, Denise LaBencki-Fullmer, an Amtrak manager, recognized the value of a peaceful ride and institutionalized the program as the quiet car. At the request of passengers, it soon spread to a number of other commuter services. <\/p>\n
The educational technology sector has something to learn from the Amtrak commuters\u2019 deliberate design of their environment. Learning requires the ability to concentrate. You need a space where you are allowed to process information, recall facts, analyze complex questions and think creatively about ideas, problems and solutions. Learning is not a smooth and easy process\u2014in fact, it is desirable that it\u2019s a bit difficult, because that is how we actually learn. Getting someone to do learning tasks for you, as tempting or comfortable as that might be, won\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
A great deal of learning still happens online, even at colleges that value in-person teaching as much as Princeton University does. The learning management system is where our students find readings, review lecture slides and practice their skills and comprehension on homework assignments. It is also where many instructors administer assessments, both low-stakes quizzes and high-stakes exams.<\/p>\n
Last month, Google launched a feature called \u201cHomework help\u201d in Chrome\u2014a shiny blue button right in the address bar. By engaging it, a student could prompt Google Gemini to summarize a reading or solve a quiz question in a matter of seconds. It thereby robbed the student of the learning activity that they were there to do. A few weeks later Google repositioned the feature so it is a bit less obvious (at least for now), but the question remains: What kind of AI tools should we make available to our students in learning management systems and assessment platforms? <\/p>\n
You might be thinking that this is a pointless question: AI is going to be everywhere\u2014it already is. And sure, that is true. Also, if a student wants to use AI, it is easy enough to open another browser tab and ask an LLM for help. But installing the AI right in the environment in which the student is trying to learn is equivalent to sitting next to the most obnoxious cell yeller on your train ride: You can\u2019t think your own thoughts, because the distraction is so big. <\/p>\n
Just as there are quiet cars on trains, there can be quiet areas of the internet. Learning management systems and assessment platforms should be one such area. That doesn\u2019t mean that there can\u2019t be good uses of AI in learning. Our students should know how to use AI responsibly, thoughtfully and critically, as should the faculty who teach them (I sometimes use AI in my own teaching, for instance). But we should also ask that the companies that provide us with learning technologies think critically and carefully about whether AI aids the difficult, careful work that learning requires or, in fact, removes the opportunity for it. AI is inevitable, but that doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t be intentional about how, why and where we implement it. <\/p>\n
I have spent the last few weeks talking with colleagues at other colleges and universities and with the partners that provide our educational technology. Everyone I have spoken with cares about education, and none of them think it\u2019s a good idea that we implement AI in a way that so clearly pulls students out of the learning process. It is actually not unrealistic that people in the tech industry and education sector come together to make the same kind of pact that the train commuters made some 25 years ago and declare our online learning systems an AI quiet zone. We would be doing the right thing by our students if we did. <\/p>\n
Mona Fixdal provides strategic planning and pedagogical leadership for Princeton University\u2019s suite of teaching and learning technologies as well its online learning program. She has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Oslo and is the author of <\/em>Just Peace: How Wars Should End and a number of chapters and articles on postwar justice and third-party mediation.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the late 1990s, a group of commuters would board the early-morning Amtrak train from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. They\u2019d sit in the first car behind the locomotive, enjoying communal, consensual silence. Eventually and with the conductor\u2019s help, their car was officially designated as a noise-free zone. Soon after, Denise LaBencki-Fullmer, an Amtrak manager, recognized<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1689,585,3949,736],"class_list":{"0":"post-29654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-cars","9":"tag-learning","10":"tag-quiet","11":"tag-risk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}