How one Utah university is trying to embrace artificial intelligence

OREM — The world is changing quickly as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent, including in the classroom.

Utah Valley University is trying to embrace it, despite its potential pitfalls and the speed at which AI is developing.

“It’s a brave new world,” Astrid Tuminez, UVU’s president, said in an interview with KSL TV. “Technology – you can never stop it, and so knowing and understanding its uses is really important.”

Using AI in the classroom

Noah Myers teaches accounting at Utah Valley University’s main campus in Orem. More and more, he finds himself using AI in the classroom.

“It’s really a net gain for education,” Myers said.

This semester he’s teaching students how to use ChatGPT to create a spreadsheet that will make their jobs as accountants easier.

Before AI made it easier to input coding and programming instructions, Myers said, this would have taken a lot longer.

“Students can rely on it as their assistant,” he said, “and it can help them learn.”

This is just one example of how UVU – which has roughly 45,000 students – is trying to get a better handle on artificial intelligence.

“We need to understand how AI works,” Tuminez said.

She pointed out that UVU has recently started using it in many ways. That includes courses like computer science and sociology, and helping students learn to identify “deepfake” images and videos in political messaging.

Plus, Tuminez said, the university has created an institute to look at how to train faculty on AI, how to prevent cheating, and how to make human resources processes better.

“And we have pioneered a chatbot – a teaching assistant – that is available 24/7 for some of our largest courses,” Tuminez added.

Concerns about AI

But there are concerns about artificial intelligence on campus like plagiarism, or students letting a computer do their thinking for them.

“It’s a real concern,” acknowledged Barclay Burns, UVU’s new assistant dean of applied AI. “Sometimes it’s easier to just let it do it for you and not go through all of the discipline of learning how to be a good writer, a good thinker, a good problem solver.”

But AI isn’t going away, and Burns said it’s important to understand how to better use it – even though it feels like the “wild, wild west” right now, with artificial intelligence technology constantly changing and improving.

Burns said UVU is launching an initiative that will gather feedback from professors and come up with new guidelines for AI use going forward.

“If students lean into, and the faculty lean into it, I think we’ll end up having smarter students,” Burns said.

Preparing for the workforce

Tuminez, UVU’s president, said students today need to understand how to use artificial intelligence as they prepare for full-time jobs.

“We want them to be workforce-ready,” Tuminez said. “Whatever field you’re going to be in – whether that’s entertainment or computer science or engineering or politics – AI is going to apply to all of these fields.”

Accounting student Conner Mariluch is about to graduate in a few months. He said using AI in Professor Myers’s class helped him learn.

As a result, Mariluch said, he feels better prepared for the workforce.

“From a practical perspective,” he said, “this was probably one of the most relevant experiences I had here at UVU.”