\n<\/p>\n
While generative AI produces written content in response to human prompts, AI agents can\u00a0complete tasks independently or without much human supervision.<\/span><\/p>\n Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | lolostock\/iStock\/Getty Images | Creatas\/Getty Images | Rawpixel<\/p>\n Weeks after an outside agentic artificial intelligence tool called Einstein caused an uproar over its ability to complete entire courses in the learning management system Canvas, Canvas has unveiled an agentic AI tool of its own. But instead of helping students cheat\u2014or automating instruction\u2014its creators say it\u2019s designed to enhance teaching and learning.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Instructure, the company that owns Canvas\u2014which is used by more than 40\u00a0percent of higher education institutions across North America\u2014announced the launch of its IgniteAI Agent. The new technology, which can automate \u201clow-value\u201d tasks for faculty such as rubric generation, content alignment and discussion reviews, \u201cfrees educators to focus more on mentoring, feedback and meaningful learning experiences,\u201d Instructure said in a news release. Powered by Amazon Web Services, the IgniteAI Agent will be free for the U.S. Canvas customers through June 30; after that it will be available for purchase as part of Canvas\u2019s premium offerings. <\/p>\n Its rollout comes amid growing buzz about the power of agentic AI to automate workflows across industries\u2014and fears that it could move higher education closer to fulfilling the \u201cdead classroom\u201d theory, a scenario in which computers teach and grade other computers. <\/p>\n As faculty use of generative AI continues to increase, education technology experts predict agentic AI will shape higher education\u2019s ever-evolving relationship with AI this year. Since 2025, ServiceNow, Google, Writer, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft have all released prebuilt agents that customers can deploy to their organizations. <\/p>\n Canvas\u2014which first announced its plans to integrate AI features, including agents, into the LMS last summer\u2014also saw potential for how instructors could use agentic AI in the classroom, according to Zach Pendleton, chief architect at Instructure.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we think about how AI can be applied to problems in education, there\u2019s an opportunity to do what we\u2019re doing now in a little better way: point-and-click AI or add a button that shrinks a five-step process down to a one-step process. Those are useful because they provide a safe place for teachers to use AI and begin to understand\u00a0\u2026 the promise of AI,\u201d Pendleton told Inside Higher Ed<\/em>. <\/p>\n \u201cBut the technological ball is not staying there,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s [moving toward] looking at reimagining the way we do things today with the hope of getting even better results regarding student outcomes and time-saving.\u201d<\/p>\n While generative AI produces written content in response to human prompts, AI agents can complete tasks independently or without much human supervision. And if generative AI stoked faculty fears about widespread cheating, the rise of agentic AI has only accelerated those concerns. <\/p>\n Last month, a young tech entrepreneur launched Einstein\u2014marketing it as an AI agent that could complete courses in Canvas\u2014in a reported effort to spark conversation about how the advancement of agentic AI has made cheating easier for students, more widespread and harder to detect. Within days, Instructure and CMG Worldwide, which manages the licensing rights for the Einstein name, issued cease-and-desist orders and the product went dark. <\/p>\n While Einstein is no longer, students still may be able to use other agentic AI tools to automate their coursework within Canvas or another LMS. And Canvas\u2019s internal AI agent isn\u2019t equipped to stop it. \u201cAsking AI if something came from AI is a recipe for disaster and disappointment,\u201d Pendleton said. \u201cLarge language models aren\u2019t especially great at being able to reason about the performance or presence of other LLMs.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Canvas\u2019s AI agent can create customized assignments and generate personalized feedback, he characterized the idea of AI agents grading the work of other AI agents as \u201cdystopian\u201d and something Instructure wants to avoid. <\/p>\n In an effort to keep humans in the loop, it purposefully built guardrails into Canvas designed to prevent instructors from fully automating grading. <\/p>\n \u201cIf faculty use a feature like AI grading to remove themselves from the responsibility of providing feedback and having conversations with students, they\u2019re teaching students that they should just go directly to the AI instead. That short-circuits human connection,\u201d Pendleton said. Instead, if faculty are transparent about using a grading assistant to provide faster, more robust feedback than they\u2019d otherwise be able to, they\u2019ve \u201cprovided additional teaching and learning, encouraged students to reach out when [faculty] are available, and saved some time to answer more deeply when they do provide feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n But some education experts worry that integrating agentic AI into the classroom as a time-saving measure will give institutions leverage to increase class sizes and faculty workloads. <\/p>\n \u201cEventually the question may become \u2018If we have so many faculty just using agentic AI, what is their value and purpose?\u2019\u201d said Jason Gulya, a professor of English and media communications at Berkeley College whose research focuses on the role of AI in higher education. <\/p>\n Although he\u2019s just getting acquainted with Canvas\u2019 new AI agent, Gulya sees both potential benefits and downsides for faculty who use it. <\/p>\n \u201cPart of me thinks an AI could be extremely helpful for course design,\u201d he said. \u201cFor example, the challenge with something like AI-generated rubrics is that you have to do so much work to give it context about the course, whereas an AI agent can navigate the course.\u201d<\/p>\n While that may make a professor\u2019s life easier, it may weaken their connection with students. <\/p>\n \u201cIf a student knows that a message or rubric was created by AI, we need to think about what it does to the relationship between the student and the professor,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to ask students to do something difficult, and if we use this technology in a way that distances the educator and student, they\u2019re not going to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n And if students and instructors begin offloading too much of their work to AI agents, Guyla said it could eventually result in a classroom mostly void of human interaction and engagement. <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s absolutely possible if we\u2019re not careful,\u201d he said. \u201cEd tech is often pushing us toward that dead classroom theory. There\u2019s a chance to rethink it, but it\u2019s going to be on higher ed to do the heavy lifting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While generative AI produces written content in response to human prompts, AI agents can\u00a0complete tasks independently or without much human supervision. Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | lolostock\/iStock\/Getty Images | Creatas\/Getty Images | Rawpixel Weeks after an outside agentic artificial intelligence tool called Einstein caused an uproar over its ability to complete entire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[7890,23956,4745,23957],"class_list":{"0":"post-47347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-agent","9":"tag-canvas","10":"tag-teaching","11":"tag-unrolls"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47347","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=47347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Specter of the \u2018Dead Classroom\u2019 <\/h2>\n