Meet Professor Robot

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In this episode

Office hours with an android? We’re not quite there yet, but the science-fiction future of higher education is closer than you might think. Thanks to a slew of new products known as courseware, college professors can practically run a class on autopilot.

Related Reading:

• The Substitute Teacher: Millions of students have to use courseware. Often, the product replaces the professor.
• The Homework Tax: For students already struggling to afford college, courseware can add to the burden.
• The ‘Textbook’ That Reads You: When students use courseware, how much personal data is it collecting?

Guest: Taylor Swaak, tech and innovation reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education

Transcript

This transcript was produced using a speech recognition software. It was reviewed by production staff, but may contain errors. Please email us at collegematters@chronicle.com if you have any questions.

Jack Stripling This is College Matters from the Chronicle.

Taylor Swaak Students have really strong feelings about it and you can see them talking about it on platforms like Reddit. They’re expressing frustration with never hearing from a professor. They’re frustrated with what feels like a lack of personalized feedback and a feeling of being cheated out of the personalized human learning experience that they expected. So they’re mad about it. They think it’s BS.

Jack Stripling: Grading papers. Giving lectures. Providing students with feedback. For most of the history of higher education, we’ve considered these tasks to be a big part of a professor’s job. But what if a machine could do it all? On college campuses across the country, new technologies are transforming how educational content is delivered — and changing the student-professor relationship in the process. What technology means for the college experience — and the human beings involved in it — is arguably more in question today than at any point in history. Today on the show, we’ll talk with Taylor Swaak, a tech and innovation reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education, about how this moment of accelerating technological change may affect the human relationships that have long been at the heart of the college experience. Taylor, welcome to the show.

Taylor Swaak Thanks so much for having me.

Jack Stripling: We’re going through a period of unprecedented technological change in the world right now. And it seems like a lot of jobs that were once done by people are going to be swallowed up by Artificial Intelligence or other tech innovations. So, tell me the truth Taylor: Are the robot professors already here?

Taylor Swaak: So, I wouldn’t say we have robot professors. But what I would say is that we have technologies that are capable of doing a lot of things that have historically been done by professors. And one area where we’re seeing that is with something called Courseware.

Jack Stripling: OK. What is Courseware, Taylor?

Taylor Swaak: So these are products that offer the soup to nuts of an entire course. So not only the digital textbook, but homework assignments, assessments, auto grading capabilities, educational videos, slide presentations, study flashcards, you name it. As one source told me, it’s kind of like getting a five course meal. And I think that sounds pretty accurate and those are really attractive supports if you are an overstretched faculty member or an adjunct professor who just got their course list a week or two ago.

Jack Stripling So this is a software that’s doing a lot of the work that we think professors do, like grading and sort of teaching? I mean, is that what you’re describing?

Taylor Swaak It offers the services for that to happen. I will say that something that is key to understand about Courseware products is it comes with this entire slate of services. It often can’t be unbundled. So the faculty member has all of those supports at their disposal and they decide how little or how much to lean on them.

Jack Stripling But theoretically, if I’m a professor and I kind of want to put my class on autopilot, I might be able to do that with these tools?

Taylor Swaak: Yes.

Jack Stripling: Okay. How do students feel about that?

Taylor Swaak Students have really strong feelings about it and you can see them talking about it on platforms like Reddit. They’re expressing frustration with never hearing from a professor. They’re frustrated with what feels like a lack of personalized feedback and a feeling of being cheated out of the personalized human learning experience that they expected. So they’re, they’re mad about it. They think it’s BS.

Jack Stripling I thought I was taking a college course with somebody who’s an esteemed professor at this institution. It turns out I’m having more interaction with what feels like a bot.

Taylor Swaak Right, Exactly.

Jack Stripling Yeah. Yeah. I can see how that might be underwhelming for a student in that class. How widespread is this, though? Are you seeing a lot of it?

Taylor Swaak For sure, yes. So when I initially reported on this topic first, which was last year, the annual Faculty Watch survey from the National Association of College Stores suggested that about one third of faculty members use Courseware-like products. And that was a figure that had been increasing pretty steadily since the first time that they conducted the survey in 2016. That translates to millions of students. And just to give one example here, McGraw-Hill, which is a major publisher that offers the Connect Courseware product, reported 5.2 million activations of that product alone in the 2023 fiscal year in the United States. And that is just one vendor, one product. So this is really widespread, really widely used. I will note just as a few additional points, this is not a product that is contained to a certain type of course within higher ed. We see use across in-person hybrid and virtual classrooms. So it really touches every corner. I will say as well, even though there isn’t robust research or data on this, what we do know from some existing research and anecdotes from publishers is that there tends to be higher usage in lower level, high enrollment courses as well as in more quantitative STEM subjects.

Jack Stripling Well, that’s interesting because I think a lot of those classes, particularly at like a major public university, if you were in an in-person class, you might be in there with hundreds and hundreds of students. That never felt like a high touch experience to begin with. So maybe the thinking is automating it a little bit isn’t that different. I can’t speak for the people choosing this, but I wonder if that’s part of it.

Taylor Swaak I did speak with instructors in reporting for this piece about the benefits that they have gotten from using Courseware products, including instructors that are in these larger, lower level courses. And there are a few key things that they pointed out to me. For one, they really appreciated, especially when they have course loads with hundreds of students that these Courseware products can provide students with immediate feedback on assignments that might take them a few days to get to in terms of grading.

Jack Stripling So immediate feedback. Talk to me about like how Courseware might give a student feedback. What do we mean by that?

Taylor Swaak This is more, and again, I’m not necessarily talking about: a student is submitting a 1,000-2,000 word essay, and this tool is providing this eloquent, thoughtful feedback on a writing assignment from a qualitative standpoint. I think when teachers are mentioning this, it’s more if there is a homework assignment, whether it’s multiple choice or like more quantitative answers, where the system can pretty immediately signal this was right, this was wrong. Some of these products also have adaptive learning capabilities built into them. And what that allows is that, you know, lessons and activities for the student are adjusted in real time for individual learners depending on how they’re performing on assessments. So if this is a math course and a student takes a quiz and they are clearly really struggling with one particular math concept because they were getting all the related questions wrong, the Courseware product is now going to recommend for your next activities for the week, more practice on that particular area. So there is some tailoring and personalization that can happen beyond yes-no, black-white answers.

Jack Stripling That’s actually really helpful to understand because I think that that’s something that professors have struggled with a lot without technology, you know, zeroing in on the thing the student really isn’t getting. And this might be allowing them to do that in a more efficient way.

Taylor Swaak Absolutely. And it’s not all products that offer this, but I think it is being adopted at an increasing level. I will add as well that another benefit that instructors have told me makes these products worth it is that it lets them use class time in a more meaningful, productive way. I was speaking with one instructor who teaches 1200 students across six hybrid sections. And, you know, she told me that having these functions like homework assignments with auto grading, study flashcards, educational videos, allowed her students time to study and practice key concepts outside the classroom so that she could dedicate the face to face portion of her class to be more what’s called a flipped model. So, dedicated to small group activities that reinforce those concepts where, you know, she could then, you know, be maybe going around the room and interacting with students. And she said it actually created scalable intimacy in what otherwise might be an unwieldy, impersonal course. And so obviously that’s just one instructor’s experience and testimony, but for folks who have these really large courses, there is a sense I’ve gotten that the value they see is that it allows them to kind of focus the limited time they do have with students in class to make that time a little bit more meaningful.

Jack Stripling Those are some of the plus sides. We’ve kind of alluded to some of the things students are complaining about about this. But what about professors and others? Is there ambivalence elsewhere in the system about these tools?

Taylor Swaak I mean, obviously, yes. The key concern, which we touched on before, is that students are not getting the personalized human learning experience that they were promised, that they end up in a fairly isolated learning experience. I have spoken with some people who are pretty against Courseware that are concerned about legal implications for colleges. Courses that are distance education courses and receive Title IV funding have to provide regular and substantive interaction to students, and there are few categories that fulfill that. But there are concerns of are we,not even from a moral standpoint, but are we legally not fulfilling our obligation to students? And who’s overseeing this? I would say that there’s also ongoing concern as well,and I think this applies to Courseware and a lot of other edtech as well, about data privacy and who controls students’ data in an environment where they’re using tools that are third party tools. Oftentimes with Courseware products, students are creating an account for this product directly through the vendor. And as we all know, vendors and companies have really nebulous, long, jargon-filled data policies that leave it really unclear a lot of the time how data is being collected, used, handled, retained, etc.

Jack Stripling You read 10,000 words and hit agree, you mean?

Taylor Swaak Exactly you basically…

Jack Stripling Which I do about ten times a day.

Taylor Swaak And I am honestly guilty of it as well. And you know, on the one hand I’ve had really interesting conversations with folks where you talk with some people and they are like, look, it is 2024, internet is everywhere, and, you know, we’ve kind of just given up our right to some extent to data privacy and just, you know, Google knows everything that’s happening with our lives. It’s interesting, though, because a lot of people really push back against that and say, you know, you surfing so social media or going shopping on a site is not the same as a student who has paid for an education and goes into that experience with some expectation that the university is protecting them and acting on their behalf. And so there is some sense that there should be more of an obligation on the part of the university to make sure that as we are using more external tools like Courseware in classrooms and beyond, like are we making sure that users and students are protected?

Jack Stripling So is there a cost associated with this for students?

Taylor Swaak Yes. So, there is. Students when they sign up for a course that uses Courseware are having to go and purchase this digital product online, and then they receive an access code which allows them to log in and then have access to all of the materials and services within the Courseware platform that the faculty member has decided to use for their course. Now, what’s a little controversial about this is that Courseware, depending on how the faculty uses it, isn’t necessarily a supplementary material in the way that a textbook historically has been. It’s sometimes offering really integral parts of a course. And so it does pose the question sometimes of why are students paying for that?

Jack Stripling Oh, I get it, so a textbook is a tool a student uses to study for the class. But Courseware, in some sense, is the class itself. It’s a college course in a box.

Taylor Swaak Right, exactly. And, you know, another part of it as well is oftentimes because homework lives within that product, it definitely forces the student’s hand to have to use and pay for the Courseware if they want to pass the class. Because if they don’t have the Courseware product, they can’t complete their homework assignments. In some cases, if they don’t have the coursework product, they can’t take the exam. Sometimes these products are essential to the passing of a course. I will say another thing that distinguishes Courseware products from textbooks is that the access is temporary and it can’t be resold. So I don’t know about you, but when I went to college, I’m pretty sure for all my courses I was trying to rent a used book at the lowest price possible. I was on Facebook groups where students were reselling a textbook that they had bought for a course that they had already taken. There was this huge student marketplace.

Jack Stripling Yeah. The worst thing that could happen is the professor’s adopted a new textbook and there is no used version. I mean, that was considered a real setback, right?

Taylor Swaak Yeah, exactly. Like, how rude of them. And with Courseware, it is a product that is purchased new. It often has temporary access. And because it is so personalized to you, it’s where you are completing your homework, taking your assessments. It’s not transferable or really able to be shared across students. And so some sources I was speaking to saying this really messes up that student marketplace model for students who really lean on more affordable course materials. That said, I will say when I asked publishers about this, the reasoning they gave is, you know, one, yes, it can’t be shared or transferred because it is personal to the students, so it’s not feasible. They made the point as well that, you know, with this digital product, we are constantly updating it and maintaining it. And so to offer students unlimited forever access for a single price at one point for something that we are maintaining in perpetuity isn’t feasible.

Jack Stripling Yeah, I can see that argument.

Taylor Swaak That part of the series, people had strong opinions on both sides. There was a lot of passion in talking about the cost implications for students.

Jack Stripling Stick around. We’ll be back in a minute.

[BREAK]

Jack Stripling Taylor, we’ve been talking about how technology might change the level of human interaction between professors and students in the classroom. Are there other areas on college campuses where technology is changing things in similar ways?

Taylor Swaak So this has been a lot of my focus as of late. And when we are seeing the infusion of technology across other functions and operations in higher ed, there’s particularly no example that’s as poignant in this moment as A.I., in a few ways. I think as some examples that people might be more familiar with, we’re seeing a growth in the use of chat bots, for example The most common use that we’ve heard being a chat bot that provides 24-seven access to information, whether that’s tied to admissions, scholarship deadlines, course registration, a way for students to get information, to commonly asked questions when staff isn’t necessarily around to answer those questions.

Jack Stripling So I type in a question and some chatbot answers it for me?

Taylor Swaak To the extent that it can, based on the data that it’s been trained on. You probably couldn’t ask it a question like “What’s your favorite TV show?”

Jack Stripling But if I had a question about where this building is on campus or how many sections of this particular course are offered, a chatbot might be able to answer that for me?

Taylor Swaak Yeah, absolutely. I think it’ll depend on the chatbot. There are some chat bots where they seem to be more institutional in focus. There are some that live inside departments. So, for example, the financial aid office might have a chatbot that will answer students’ questions about scholarship deadlines or the FAFSA. There might be one at admissions that will answer questions about when are the next tours? How do I sign up? What are the key registration deadlines I need to know? And so there are some that are personalized to certain areas of the university as well.

Jack Stripling And as a student, I might previously have walked over to some sort of office and asked a human being this question, or, God forbid, gone to a web page and tried to scroll all through it to find the answer to this particular question, which definitely is not going to be answered on that webpage. But I’m going to read the whole thing. So maybe this bot is allowing that to happen?

Taylor Swaak The 24-7 access is is the big one as well. So if you have a question at, you know, 11 p.m. on a Sunday like you might get the answer that you were looking for.

Jack Stripling Are you saying that perhaps the student has procrastinated and should have asked this question earlier, and now has to turn to a robot to do it because he or she waited too long? Is that a possibility?

Taylor Swaak Jack, have you ever been a college student?

Jack Stripling I have. I have. And I can picture me talking to this bot a lot.

Taylor Swaak Yeah, exactly. So that’s kind of a way that I think has been pretty frequently talked about. And it was some of the initial use cases that we are seeing.

Jack Stripling Are there other areas in which colleges are relying on AI for tasks that might have previously been performed by humans?

Taylor Swaak Yeah. So we’re seeing A.I. supported technologies making their way across the higher ed landscape, across different departments and offices. You know, some of the immediate ones that come to mind for me are, for example, the Student Affairs Office. We’re seeing early alert systems to identify students who are at risk of dropping out. In academic advising, we’re seeing the early use of A.I. to identify course equivalents for students who are seeking to transfer to another institution. I have heard of colleges that are contemplating the use of A.I. to evaluate student transcripts. And most recently, I have been focusing on the use of A.I.-supported software to flag applications coming into a college that might potentially be fraudulent.

Jack Stripling What’s the scam here? Why would somebody want to send a fake application to a college?

Taylor Swaak So the scam, perhaps unsurprisingly, is money related. These bad actors are trying to get a hold of either federal or institutional aid, and they’re also trying to cash in on some of those perks and discounts that can come with having a student email address, whether that’s to different softwares, newspaper subscriptions, etc.

Jack Stripling So we’re seeing a college world that’s changing in a lot of ways, either in the name of efficiency or security. And there might be good reasons for that. But is anyone regulating this? Is anyone saying within the college: Here’s what we are and aren’t willing to do with tech?

Taylor Swaak Yeah, there are a few ways and it’s definitely, I want to note, something that is extremely top of mind right now for college officials and college administrators. In a 2023-2024 Digital Learning Pulse survey, in fact, 77 percent of administrators who responded at four year colleges and 89 percent at two-year colleges felt their institutions were not prepared for A.I.-related changes in particular. But I think it speaks to the need for folks at colleges to be able to wrap their arms around this growing use of both A.I. and tech. And there are few ways that colleges and administrators are doing this currently. One is to, if you can’t establish new policy, to at least establish these kind of base level guidelines that establish some basic truth, shared understanding that everyone at the institution can agree on. And just to give an example of A.I., that could be: A.I. is never the main decision maker, or we will never put personal student information into X, Y, Z tools without getting prior approval. Things like that that provide a base, a starting point that then hopefully individual departments can build on to make their own.

Jack Stripling: So Taylor, we started this conversation with me asking you whether the robot professors were coming. And I have to admit, it kind of sounds like they’re already here, and they’re bringing financial aid chatbots and maybe even A.I. admissions officers with them. All of this makes me wonder what college is going to look like in five or ten years. Where do you see all of this headed?

Taylor Swaak That is such a great question, Jack. It is so tricky to have a crystal ball in something like this. I mean, think about two years ago. Like, would we be even talking about A.I. in this conversation we were having? Candidly, it wasn’t even something that I was thinking about much at all as the tech and innovation reporter and now look at all these applications and use cases that we’re talking about. And so that really just speaks to how quickly the landscape is transforming and often in really unpredictable ways. So I’m hesitant to make prophecies or guesses about where we are headed next. You know, what I do know is in this space, even if implementation of certain emerging tech or A.I., for example, hasn’t happened, the capabilities are already here in many cases. And, you know, so just to give an example, I’ve come across an A.I. tool that can scan essays and personal statements and render a score on an applicant’s non-cognitive traits like positive attitude. That tool exists. I couldn’t find any institution that was using it that way, but it exists. I came across a company who was promoting a robot dog that could be outfitted with A.I. software that could patrol the campus and flag faces that it didn’t recognize. And it could even be programmed to call the police if you wanted. And again, no colleges that I could find were using it in that way, but that technology and those capabilities exist. And so, you know, what I’ll be watching for is a reporter with kind of my accountability hat on is, you know, even though for right now, it does seem like there is due diligence, there is acknowledgment of risk and people are moving fairly cautiously, does a slippery slope ever emerge? You know, do colleges start to redraw some of the lines in the sand as time goes on, as trust in technology like A.I. grows, as more of the kinks are worked out? Like do we start to go there or do we start pushing the line of, you know what in 2024 we weren’t comfortable with, do we start being comfortable with it, and how does that change the landscape? And so it is just so hard to know, like I said before, but it’s a fascinating space to watch.

Jack Stripling Well, it sounds like the future is now. So thanks for walking us through it, Taylor. It’s fascinating. It’s unnerving at times, but you can’t take your eyes off it. And I’m glad you’re covering it. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Taylor Swaak Thanks so much for having me.

Jack Stripling College Matters from The Chronicle is a production of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation’s leading independent newsroom covering colleges. If you like the show, please leave us a review or invite a friend to listen. And remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. You can find an archive of every episode, all of our show notes, and much more at chronicle.com/collegematters. If you like, drop us a note at collegematters@chronicle.com. We are produced by Rococo Punch. Our podcast artwork is by Catrell Thomas. Special thanks to our colleagues Brock Read, Sarah Brown, Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez, Laura Krantz, Carmen Mendoza, Ron Coddington, Joshua Hatch, and all of the people at The Chronicle who make this show possible. I’m Jack Stripling. Thanks for listening.