As a teacher and researcher at a contemporary university there is significant pressure to incorporate artificial intelligence and, in particular, LLMs into the everyday activities of the workplace. Universities increasingly advertise their offers of training programmes and software subscriptions; software packages frequently highlight their new AI capabilities; new streams of funding are tied to the exploration of AI possibilities; and the pressure to produce a continual stream of scholarly outputs and applications for third-party grants just to stay in a job makes them into a tempting technological shortcut.

While it might sometimes feel easy to get caught up in this wave of enthusiasm, the question of whether and how to incorporate LLMs intentionally into the classroom pushes us to reflect on what our teaching is really about and why or why not these tools might align with our most-basic values and intentions for our students and for the society in which we want to help them play a role.

Developing Pedagogical Values

My first experience of university teaching was, at the same time, an exciting and a confusing one. Having asked the University of Cologne in the summer of 2022 whether I might teach a couple of courses, the university had accepted my paragraph-long proposals, presented me with a class of students, and essentially told me to get on with it. My methods of teaching were, it seemed, up to me. So were my methods of assessment and marking. I had a blank canvas on which to develop a set of shared expectations with the students, to develop a teaching philosophy, and to decide what my university teaching was really about. 

After several years of reviewing course designs and assessments as an external examiner in the UK, this freedom was unexpected. Surely there must be some kind of detailed mark scheme, some process of oversight, some set of institutional expectations as to what this was all supposed to look like. I quickly came to realise that this was not how the German university system is built up, and that it really was up to me, and me alone, to figure out what I was going to do. I would have to decide myself what was really important for the students to learn and experience in the space of my classroom.

While I had the freedom to lead and guide a process of learning from the front, the students brought their own sets of experiences, hopes, norms, and expectations with them. How much should they be expected to read each week? Should they be learning content from my presentations, or bringing their own perspectives through extended debate and discussion? Did they feel ready and motivated to carry out fieldwork? How should a diversity of perspectives be balanced with a sense of coherence through the weeks of the course? How could they combine exploration of their own interests with the promise of a good grade at the end of it? 

Different students and different teaching staff often approach these kinds of questions in different ways. Some focus more on critical reflection while others focus more on content; some are interested in preparation for a particular workplace, while others believe in the value of knowledge for its own sake; some believe more in the value and authority of traditions while others are more excited to bring these traditions into question. My own university experience had crossed multiple institutions and ways of doing things, so figuring out how the expectations of students in a foreign university system might intersect with my own was not always the easiest process. 

Despite such challenges, over the course of time, it gradually became clear to me what I wanted to encourage, and what kind of values my pedagogical practice might be based upon. I believed in exploration and curiosity; in a dialogue between course content, life, and the world around us; I believed in critical thinking that might have the potential to foster social change; I believed in space for discussion more than lectures; in thinking through ideas more than learning facts; and I believed in students undertaking projects that took some of their own interests and enthusiasms and gave the chance to develop them in new and creative directions. 

Do LLMs Align with our Goals?

The pressure to incorporate LLMs into the classroom forces us, once again, to consider foundational philosophical questions about the nature of our teaching. What is it ultimately about? And how do these technologies help or hinder those goals?

One of the most basic questions is epistemological in nature. How do we know about the world around us, and on what kind of foundations is our knowledge built? Does a model based on the prediction of textual patterns provide a good means of discovery and insight? What can we really know and discover on this kind of computational basis? In what kind of ways might it open up or limit our thinking? 

A second question is structural and ethical. Is it ok for a limited number of large companies to extract and profit from the work of millions of other humans and condense it down into a small number of centralised models and source? What kind of society might it lead us to if that becomes a primary means of interacting with information? Do we want it? Do we want to resist it?

A third question is to do with our own capabilities and development. Do these tools help us and our students to develop their own capacity for thinking and reflection by interacting with these models, or do we learn a mode of dependence that shortcuts important aspects of human interaction and development? Does LLM usage help us to develop as the kind of people and society that we want to be and contribute to the university’s role in helping to make that possible?

Finally, for me, is the question of whether these tools offer something genuinely and positively transformative. Does the presence of an LLM in my classroom give me exciting new ways for students to learn? Does its ability to role-play, identify patterns, or summarise texts offer me something that my teaching wants and needs?

The provocation to reflect on these kind of questions is an important one. Our courses and paths of study can often solidify over time into structures that fail to keep up with the needs of a changing world around us. As teachers it can be easy to settle into familiar ways of doing things rather than to ask what purpose these things might ultimately be serving. We cannot ignore the increasing presence of LLMs in the world around us and, as Thomas Bauer has argued, they are present in our universities whether we like it or not. If they fail to align with our core projects in teaching and education, however, and if they fail to help us bring about the world we truly want to help create, then there is every reason not to place them at the heart of our pedagogy and to resist the pressure to do so. 

For me, it is clear that there are significant tensions between what LLMs have to offer and the values on which my teaching is based. I am doubtful that they are built upon good epistemological foundations; I am wary of the ways in which AI models extract, exploit, and centralise information; I am unconvinced that they help us to develop into the people and society that I truly want to see; and I have yet to find a classroom scenario in which their usage is truly innovative and exciting. 

Others will answer some of these questions in different ways but, at least for now, at least in my teaching, I am (mostly) steering clear.