In past podcasts, we’ve often explored faculty concerns about student use of generative AI. In this episode, Kaija Hoyt joins us to discuss the evolution of her AI use. Kaija graduated from SUNY Oswego in May 2025 with a major in Human Resource Management and a minor in Mathematics. After graduation, Kaija provided a presentation on this topic to Oswego faculty and staff during an AI symposium.
Show Notes
Transcript
John: In past podcasts, we’ve often explored faculty concerns about student use of generative AI. In this episode, a student describes the evolution of her AI use.
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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
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Rebecca: Our guest today is Kaija Hoyt. Kaija graduated from SUNY Oswego in May 2025 with a major in Human Resource Management and a minor in Mathematics. After graduation, Kaija provided a presentation during an AI symposium on our campus in which she discussed the evolution of her use of AI tools. Welcome back, Kaija.
Kaija: Thank you for having me again.
John: Today’s teas are:… Kaija, are you drinking any tea?
Kaija: I am not today because the room that I’m in right now is too small for me to store my tea. So it’s really sad because for this entire month I’ve been tealess. Yeah, it’s very unfortunate.
Rebecca: That is very, very horrible.
Kaija: Yeah.
Rebecca: I have English tea time today, John
John: And I’ve been without tea, but I picked up some tea at a Whole Foods across the street from Duke where I’m recording from, and I’ve got some ginger peach black tea, again, restoring one of my favorites.
Rebecca: Oh, look how it doesn’t matter where you are, [LAUGHTER] you can still drink the same tea. [LAUGHTER]
John: It’s so convenient. So we enjoyed that conversation we had with you in last week’s podcast on microaggressions, and we thought we’d bring you back for another discussion. And once again, this is based on a presentation you gave during a workshop for faculty on our campus, except this time you were talking about how your use of AI tools evolved. ChatGPT arrived on the scene in late November of your sophomore year and was rapidly adopted by many students. What was your initial reaction to ChatGPT and AI tools in general?
Kaija: I hated it. I was so mad that they had kind of become a thing. Because for me, who’s always been like a strong writer and a strong student, it kind of devalued that in a way, because a lot of students were using that, and their writing was about at the same level as mine, or stronger. And some professors were starting to maybe not realize that it was AI doing that, and expect me to write more of that standard. And I also didn’t like the idea of using it. I’ve always really wanted my work to be fully my own, and so when it was first coming about and other people were using that, I was just very strongly against it, and still to this day, to some extent, like, I’m not a huge fan of AI and the use of AI in a lot of environments, but for me, I wish it hadn’t come about when it first did.
Rebecca: I hear, though, that your position or reaction or response to generative AI has shifted a bit over time. Can you talk a little bit about what changed your opinion?
Kaija: Yeah, so I was very firm in the AI use all the way until, I would say, honestly, like the end of junior year, so pretty much like a solid year and a half of being anti AI. I had a professor, Dr. Friedman, who loves AI. He’s kind of obsessed with it in a good way. So in our classes with him, he really encourages the use of AI and gives us some ideas on how to use it. He was really passionate about “You could use it to help you with this part of an assignment.” Or, like, for example, with writing assignments, he would say, “you could use it to draft an outline for you and then build off the outline.” Or when we were doing our compensation project, he said, “help it come up with competencies for you, help it come up with the weights, it can help you with all of that.” So he pushed it pretty strongly. And that compensation class I took with him junior year in the beginning. And even though he was saying that and pushing that, and my group members were like, “Yeah, let’s use it. Let’s use it.” I was like, “Listen, if you want to use it, you can, but I’m not going to” like,” if that’s what you choose to do, fine, whatever. I don’t care, but I’m going to still steer away from it.” And then he also became my honor thesis advisor at about that same time, and that was when he started pushing AI at me even harder. And I kind of was like, “okay, whatever like, just to get you off my back, I’ll try it this one time.” And then I was like, “oh, you know what? That actually did help a lot.” So I started realizing, like, “okay, it’s really useful with things that are, like, the small work that you have to put into a project that doesn’t really have to come from you, like things that AI can do for you that will make it easier to do the project and will also leave more time for you to, like, brainstorm and be creative.” So it takes that monotonous part out of it, which ended up being really helpful, and it also is really good with writer’s block, I feel like, so that was kind of the thing that switched me, for the most part, to being okay with using AI.
John: Could you tell us a little bit about how you used it in your writing?
Kaija: Yeah, so in my honors thesis, I used it when I was having a hard time, like merging two ideas together with like getting it to flow, just having it give me ideas. I very rarely used what it gave me, because basically what I did was like, I would have it help me, and then that would spark an idea for me. Maybe it would give me a transition word, and then I’d be like, I should use furthermore here, that would work really well, or something like that. So it was more of like a jumping off point for brainstorming, but it also helped me a bit if I was struggling to paraphrase something, like getting it to what is another word that fits here? Because sometimes I know there’s a word, and I think I know what the word is, but I just can’t remember it in that moment. So it did help me a lot with that. I also used it with restructuring my thesis. Because when I got to a certain point, I don’t even remember what point this was, but there was a point when I was like, wait a minute, my outline doesn’t make any sense for what this has turned into. So I needed to, like, move things around. And that was really stressful, because at that point I was definitely over halfway done. So there was, like, a lot of paragraphs, there was a lot of information, and I kind of knew how I wanted to move it around, but I also wanted that feedback of, does this make sense? Are these transitions better? worse? the same? And I was trying not to put too much work on my advisors, because I knew they were both very busy at the time and I also really prefer to get their feedback after I know what I want, so that I don’t feel like I’m just doing what they tell me to do. I like to know this is how I want it to be, and then hear their feedback, and then go from there. So I used it to help me switch up that outline a little bit, and I didn’t take exactly what it told me, like this paragraph should go here. For some of it, I was like, “Yeah, that makes sense.” And for others, I was like, “Actually, I feel like this is a better transition,” but it helps me kind of be okay with making that change. So basically, it’s helped me in a lot of ways with writing, but it’s mostly just that starting point and getting me comfortable with what I’m doing, and then later on, it basically looks like AI didn’t help me at all because of how many changes I ended up making.
Rebecca: It sounds to me like some of the ways that you’ve been using AI are to find out what you don’t want, like to bring clarity. [LAUGHTER]
Kaija: Yep, a lot of the time, a lot of it is because there are things that AI wants or thinks that I hate, or just, I’m like, “That is not my writing style. I’m not going to do that.” So I do definitely use it in that way. Or like, sometimes if I give it a paragraph to proofread, and then I see how it wants to make that paragraph, and I’m like, that’s not what I’m trying to say. And it helps me be like, this is what I need to change to make it work. So I definitely used it in that way.
Rebecca: One other thing you mentioned was the writer’s block. And I don’t know any faculty or students that get writer’s block ever. So I’m asking for a friend. How were you using it to overcome writer’s block? You hinted at a little bit, but could you give some more specifics?
Kaija: Yeah. So one of the big things is if, for example, I at one point was going to talk a bit about some psychological theories that relate to microaggressions, and Dr. Friedman had suggested that I cover that at some point in the thesis. He’d given me some brief explanations of different theories he thought would apply, like he gave me a lot to build off of, but I didn’t feel great about writing it, because I’m not really a psychology person, and so I asked AI for some help. One, it helped me find sources, but it also helped me with figuring out how to work that into my thesis and starting the writing. So I told it what Dr. Friedman wanted, and then it kind of gave me, like, “you could do this.” And so then I was able to figure out, okay, from that, what do I want to do? It’s also really good with brainstorming outlines and ideas for projects, because sometimes you just get stuck and you can’t think outside the box at all. Usually, in my experience, like I’ll ask it to brainstorm something, and I won’t really love the answers it gives me or the ideas, but it’ll spark something else. It’s like, if you talk to someone else about it and they gave you a bunch of ideas, except you don’t have to find someone who wants to talk to you about it. You can just ask it, and it’ll word vomit some things at you, and then you can be like, “Okay, I know what I want to do now.”
Rebecca: An introvert’s dream.
John: And also, if you’re doing some work at two or three in the morning, it might be easier to have that conversation with ChatGPT than to wake someone up and ask them to give you feedback. One of the other things you mentioned was that the type of feedback you were getting on your writing was different than the type of feedback that people get from Grammarly and other tools, because with Grammarly, which students have been using for quite a while now, it’ll tell you what to change, but it won’t explain why it should be changed. I think you were getting a little bit more information from ChatGPT in terms of the types of recommendations it would use, and that also ended up affecting the writing that you did later during your thesis. Could you talk a little bit about this?
Kaija: Yeah, so one of the main differences for me personally was occasionally I was looking for grammar checks, but that wasn’t my main focus, because grammar and spelling, like, I’m good on that, and mine is more like, “How can I just make it even better?” So I feel like Grammarly can do that, but yeah, like you said, It never tells you why it’s doing it. I also find Grammarly a little bit annoying, because it just yells at you about everything, and that’s not what I want. Like there’s specific things that I’m looking to fix, and you can’t tell it that, whereas with ChatGPT, you can be like, “Hey, check this paragraph to see if I used also 50 times instead of mixing it with different words.” Or one of the things that I did with it was in my thesis on microaggressions and talking about the trainings that I was proposing, I wanted it to be trainings (plural) consistently, because that’s what made sense for what I was writing. But a lot of the time Google and Grammarly, whatever, really wants it to be singular, which makes sense, but in the context that I was using it, it needed to be plural, even though it thought it was wrong. So I’ve used it in one way with that to be like, “Hey, if you see it, say training singular anywhere like highlight that or call that out so I can fix it.” Another thing, this isn’t a real example for me, but I know some people will start a sentence “although this” and then they never finish, like the last part, so you can tell it look for those situations, and it can highlight them for you. Another thing that I did was there’s like, active/passive voice, I tend to forget to check that, and also really struggle with like when I reread something to check for that, sometimes I just get distracted by something else and I forget what I’m looking for. So I tell it, like, call out those moments, and then I could see it. And then over time, like, the more it was like, “You need to fix this, you need to fix this, the less I made that mistake. So it was really more of a learning thing for me with figuring out, like, “Okay, what are the problems in my writing and what is the way to do it better?” And then, like, I would say by the end of the thesis, like, I wasn’t really using it that much, because most of the problems that I was having I figured out what I was doing wrong and how I should do it better.
Rebecca: Based on some of your examples, I’m thinking other examples that fall into the same category, or maybe, like, checks for first and third person, other things like that that we all make mistakes on when you’re initially writing a draft.
Kaija: Yeah, for sure. I think if it’s one of those things where you maybe are someone who writes… this is really good for students, because I know there’s a lot of students who like to write in the first person… I think it would be awesome if professors who notice, like, “Hey, you’re someone who has a really hard time getting rid of those ‘I’s’ like you love to write. ‘I think that,’ or ‘I believe,’ showing them how to use ChatGPT to help you reword it could be really helpful,” because it’s not that they want to submit it with the ‘I’ in there. It’s just that they don’t realize there’s a better way to do it.” And the more that you have something telling you this is the better way, like, the more likely you are to catch on and to learn it. And a lot of times, professors don’t really take the time to do that with students. They just say, like, “don’t use I,” but students don’t understand how to not do it. So they really need that assistance with the teaching on that part.
Rebecca: One thing, Kaija, that you mentioned earlier was telling ChatGPT, like, “No, I don’t agree with you. [LAUGHTER] I want you to focus on this in a way that you felt like tools like Grammarly couldn’t do that.” And I know that that’s something I enjoy doing too, like telling the machine, “No, do it this way instead. Try this instead.” Can you talk a little bit more about some of the iterations you were able to accomplish using ChatGPT?
Kaija: Yeah. So with different iterations, I would definitely say there were, especially with the structure piece. So trying to restructure it, I think I changed the structure a couple times. And one of the things that I started with, figured out the main ideas of my paragraphs, gave it that, and said, “What order makes the most sense?” And then it did whatever it did. And I was like, “Actually, you don’t realize what the paragraph really includes. So you don’t understand. I don’t agree.” So then I gave it more information. So instead of just like this paragraph defines microaggressions, I really summarized it a little bit deeper. So that was one of the things where I kind of went through a couple different attempts with it and got it to understand what I wanted. Another thing that happened, this is, like, less related to it proofing my writing, and more related to, like, the output it gave me. So one time, I gave it a paper because I had proofread it twice, and I was tired of staring at it, and I knew that there were mistakes, and I just couldn’t find them, so I gave it the paper, and I said, “Don’t edit it,” because I gave it the paper the first time and said, proofread this, whatever prompt I used for it, something along the lines of like, proofread this. And then it gave me the essay rewritten how it would write it. And I was like, “No, don’t do that. Don’t rewrite it. Just tell me what is wrong with it. Tell me what needs to be fixed.” And then I don’t even remember what that output was, but I was like, that’s not really what I want. So then I said, “Okay, without changing anything, just tell me what the strengths of this are, what the weaknesses are, and what things are just clunky.” And then it gave me a very broken down, “These are the parts that are strong. And then a couple of quotes of examples. And then these are the areas that could be improved.” And then if, with the improvements, I needed help with, like, how do I do that? Then I can ask it that, like, “Well, how do I make this more concise?” And it would give me examples.
John: When you gave that presentation to faculty, one of the other things you talked about was using this to help prepare you in your math classes. Can you talk a little bit about how you use ChatGPT to support your learning in math.
Kaija: Yeah. So it was in my introduction to algebra class, which started off a little rough for me. I was having a really hard time paying attention in class for the first, I want to say, like a month, and that first test came around, and it’s not go well at all, which is very strange for me, because I usually do really well in math. So that was, like, a big blow for my ego. And I was like, “Yikes. Okay, this is a problem.” So I started paying more attention in class, and that helped. And I was doing the homeworks and starting to understand them, but the first stuff that we had learned, like, kind of I knew, like, “I just really don’t get this, and I don’t know if I’m going to if I just keep going in the class.” So we had a textbook, but it was one of those textbooks where it’s like, the professor uses the textbook, but not really, so it doesn’t directly match up. It’s not like Calc I and II, where you are literally doing your homework out of the textbook, and the textbook follows the same path that the class does, like this class in the textbook were different enough that it made it kind of challenging to find practice problems in the textbook. And the other thing is that practice problems in the textbook are not always what you’re looking for, and there’s no way to like, filter them out, like, you just have to stare at it and find the one you want. You can’t be like, “Well, I’m looking for how to do mod eight.” You have to find that in the massive answers that there are. And the professor did give homework, but I think we had like one a week, and there was only like six to eight questions each. And I’m very used to math classes where you have like 20 questions for a night at minimum, although those are usually optional, but I do them because I love math. So it was kind of odd for me. And I was like, “Why are we not doing more?” And I also, in addition to the fact that I was struggling, like I also wanted to do more with it, I really enjoyed it. So I went to ChatGPT, and I was like, “I feel like this could help me.” So I kind of told it what the class was, told it what I was learning, and then said, “Do you understand what this topic is?” And it was like, “Yes, I can give you practice questions.” So then I would tell it, “Okay, can you give me a question on Z/8?” and then it would give me something, and then I could do it. This is the one that I had a problem with. It was that I told it like, “I just want you to say whether it’s right or wrong. That’s it. Give me the question, I’ll tell you the answer, and you say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and then if you say ‘no,’ then I’ll be like, ‘Okay, walk me through it.’” But it just kept giving me the whole thing anyway, even though I told it, like five times, so I just gave up. So that was kind of how I used it for mostly getting practice problems. And there were also sometimes, if there was a concept that I was struggling with, I would have it kind of walk me through it. And honestly, it’s pretty impressive how well it did with this class, because this is like a higher level math class. I did not expect it to understand it, but it really was good at walking me through like how to solve it. And then from that, I was able to create my own understanding of what to do with some of these problems.
Rebecca: Kaija, what class was this in?
Kaija: Introduction to algebra, which sounds easy, but it’s Math 330 and it’s not like solving simple algebra equations. It’s like abstract algebra concepts.
Rebecca: I kept thinking that doesn’t sound like intro to algebra. [LAUGHTER]
John: When you were getting these problems, one of the things you noted when you gave a presentation describing this was that you learned how to modify your prompts a bit to get more useful feedback. Could you talk a little bit about what sort of modifications you made to get more useful results from ChatGPT?
Kaija: I, for one, kind of learned how to get better at telling it what kind of problems I wanted, because I started off with being like, “Can you give me an example of something like asking whether or not it’s a homomorphism?” I gave it no context, so it didn’t know what types of groups we learned about and what types we didn’t. So one time it gave me this group that I honestly was like, “I don’t even know what that is. Never heard of it.” So then I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna start telling it like, these are the groups we know. Give me an example from there.” So that was for the practice poems it gave me, and then when it gave me the feedback on whether it was right or wrong. If it was a time when I was like, “Okay, I actually need this feedback because I didn’t do it right or I could just then I would read through what it gave me,” and then I would give it follow up questions of, like, “Okay, here’s where I’m stuck with your explanation, L I don’t know what this means.” Or “Can you clarify this more,” which sometimes it would just regurgitate the same thing. So then I had to figure out a different way that I can phrase this to get the part that I’m confused about out of it.” So asking, like, “Okay, I don’t understand where this Z came from. Why is there a z here?” instead of just, like, “What does this mean?” because if you just say, “What does this mean?” it’s just going to throw the same thing at you, and it’s not going to help.
Rebecca: So I’m kind of wondering, given the experiences that you’ve had in using ChatGPT in some really different contexts, how would you like to see faculty talk about AI in their classes, or what parameters or ideas do you think would be helpful for other students to understand how it might actually be a productive way of learning in a class?
Kaija: I have very strong feelings about that, so I’m glad you asked. For me, I think that it was really helpful having a professor who said, “This is how you should use it. This is the ways that it can help you in this class specifically, and I’m not going to penalize you for using it in those ways.” That really is what helped me, like, be open to using AI. And I know, not for me because I was anti-AI, but for other students who can’t seem to get away from using it, when a professor is just like, blanket no AI policy. You’re not allowed to use it like they just decide to entirely ignore the AI policy because they don’t care. They don’t know how to learn without it. And they’re so dependent on it that if you don’t provide them a way to use it productively and without plagiarizing, then they just can’t move away from it, and obviously some students are always going to use it to write their papers for them. I’m not saying that this is going to solve that problem totally, but I think that there are a lot of students out there who, if you say to them, “Hey, I’m okay with you using it to make the outline,” or “I’m okay with you using it to help you proofread,” or something like that, and showing them like these are the ways that you can use it without it becoming an academic integrity problem, then they are going to be more likely to actually put that work in alone, because a lot of it is like, they just don’t know where to start. They don’t know what to do. They’ve got writer’s block, and there’s a deadline, and so they’re just like, I’m just going to have it write it for me. But I don’t know for sure, because I wasn’t super close with the people that were in my senior seminar HR class, but Dr. Friedman said in that class for our paper that we had like “You can ask ChatGPT for an outline, and you can build off of that. You can ask it for assistance in writing this paper. You can ask it for sources.” And I’m pretty sure that a lot of students in the class really took that and did that and used AI responsibly and still submitted mostly their own work, whereas with other professors, I noticed them just kind of having it write it for them, or things like that. And I know that, like a lot of the time in the tutoring center, if I have a student come in for writing who is clearly someone who’s really dependent on AI, I try to give them that overview of like, if you use it in this way, A) you’re safe and B) this will help you in the future as well. And it seems to work. So that’s a small example. So I don’t really know, but it does seem to be really helpful to be clear about like, these are good ways to use it, these are bad ways to use it. Instead of just saying all of it’s bad, you can’t use it at all.
John: So during your time at Oswego, I think you had five semesters during which AI has been available to all students. How often, though, did professors talk to the students about whether AI could be used, when it should be used, and why it might be inappropriate to use it in other areas? Was that a conversation that happened very often?
Kaija: So I would say I had the one professor who talked about it lot. I had probably one or two professors who really consistently called out, like, please do not use AI in my class. If I catch you using it, I will fail you. And then I would say it’s hard with math, because math professors don’t really talk about AI very much, which is mostly because it can’t really do that much with math, because it’s really easy to catch it, because it hallucinates a lot when it’s math, and honestly, it will take more of your time to use it in a math class to, like, do your homework for you if you’re trying to get a good grade. So they don’t talk about it a ton, but they do say they have their policy of don’t cheat, and that includes AI use, things like that. And then in my other classes, I think most of them had it in the syllabus, like you are not allowed to use AI in this class, that that would lead to a failing grade and being reported to the dean. But if they even said anything about it, they only addressed it, like on the day that they went over the syllabus, and then they would just not talk about it again. So I think a lot of them, like, just put the policy on there because they feel more comfortable with that and they don’t really want to have to address it. That’s kind of the vibe that I’ve gotten. So I would say it’s like, mostly just this thing that, like, you know you’re not supposed to do, but you also don’t really know what’s going on with it, at least in the School of Business.
Rebecca: You’ve talked a bit about math and you were just pointing out the hallucination issue with math problems, and because you were doing practice problems and things with it, how often did you find the hallucinations bubbling up in your use?
Kaija: So surprisingly, it didn’t happen as much because it was more conceptual things than computational, but there were a couple things that were computational that I used it for, and that’s when I found it hallucinating. One of them was I was practicing the product of cycles, and I’m pretty confident in this, but I just wanted to practice it because the final was coming up, and you never know. So I was going through, I think it was the second or third example with it, and I did the multiplication the way that I knew was correct, and I got the answer that I knew was correct, and I told it, this is what I got. And it said, that’s wrong. So then I looked through the output that it gave me of it’s step-by-step, and it’s step-by-step didn’t make any sense. I don’t know what it was doing. I don’t know what happened, because it was working fine before that. I do suspect that it’s possible that it had been right when I’d run out of the like higher-level questions, and it switched me to the lower level, and that’s why it happened, but I don’t know that for sure. And so I got to the end of it, and I was like, “No, I’m definitely right. I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s wrong.” So I basically told it that. I said, “Your answer is wrong, my answer is right. I don’t know what you did, but that’s what it is.” And so then it responded to that, and was like, “Yeah, you’re right. You got the right answer.” But then, like, it’s calculation, it had the answer, it had before, and then it had my answer, and then it said, “Yeah, so you’re right.” It was like, 123, so 345, and I was like, [LAUGHTER] that doesn’t make any sense. So I did stop checking my answers with it at that point with those because I was like, you don’t know what you’re doing, but that is the only time that happened with the higher-level algebra. I have seen it do funny things with lower-level math classes, like regular algebra or calculus, because I’ve used it for fun with that, just to, like experiment and see if I can get it to hallucinate, because I think it’s funny. [LAUGHTER] And it definitely has happened a couple times with that, which is a little bit interesting, that it can just kind of end up in places. And I’ve also found that if you tell it like it’s wrong, it doesn’t even care if it’s actually wrong, it just decides that it is. And so that is probably part of the problem, is people being convinced that they’re right, and so they’re training it that this other thing is true and it’s not. So it’s pretty confused on things like that. And I think that’s the other thing that I think is why it worked better for introduction to algebra, because I don’t think there’s a lot of people going to ChatGPT for that. So I think it really just had that database of whatever it found when it was first started, and less of that user input that can make it more incorrect.
John: One of the things you described just a few minutes ago was using ChatGPT to get more practice problems, especially in classes where there’s not enough practice problems to make you feel comfortable. Is this something that perhaps students should do more regularly or more often? Use it to help develop skills when they’re not getting practice problems that are relevant to their own areas. When instructors give assignments with a group of problems they’re generic problems that are designed to address the needs of all students, but every student comes in with very different backgrounds in terms of what they understand and what they don’t. Were you able to use this to help develop those areas where you weren’t as comfortable with and not having to spend that much time on those areas that you were more comfortable with?
Kaija: Yeah, so it’s totally adaptable to what I needed, and with what I said about I fell behind because I wasn’t with it at the beginning. So it was something where it’s like, we’re not going to have more practice problems. We left this way back there. It can still show up on the final but we’re not talking about it anymore, whereas he’s still giving us practice problems for whatever we’re working on now, and so I would do that homework, but that was something that I was like getting. So instead of spending extra time on that, I would just go do the areas that I needed, and I didn’t, in this context, but you can have it figure out on its own what areas it is that you’re struggling with, and then it can just throw those questions at you, because you don’t have to tell it: “Give me a question on homomorphism.” So you can say, “Give me a question that would appear on an introduction to algebra test.” And for the most part, it’s good, especially the more information you feed it. And then if you work through, and you work through, it starts to catch on, like, this is where you’re struggling, and this is where you’re set. So it can really modify to you in the same way that your professor would at office hours, without you needing to go to office hours and figure out that schedule with them, because our times usually don’t match.
John: When you presented this, a math instructor asked, “Why didn’t you just go and talk to the instructor with questions?” And you gave a really good response that I think would resonate with a lot of people. How did you respond to that question?
Kaija: So I basically said that for me as a student, I’m a very independent learner, and I also don’t like to ask for help, and so going to office hours is really difficult for me from that side of it, and I personally am someone who would rather spend two hours on a math problem than have anyone or anything help me with it, like I really want to figure it out on my own. That’s something that’s really important to me, and so the more help that I get with it, the less satisfied I am when I solve it. And one of the things that I really like about AI versus a human in that is like with your professor, they don’t really know what pace you learn at, and they don’t really know what specific spot you’re stuck on. And so with a professor like they might just either show me the whole problem or do it in that way where they’re trying to get me to figure it out, which are both great methods, but it’s not necessarily what I’m looking for in that situation all of the time. And so with AI, what I can do is I can do my steps and say, “Okay, this is where I’m stuck,” and then just see what’s the next thing. Or, like, “give me a hint on something small,” which professors sometimes are really good about that. The professor for this class was actually great with that. There was a couple questions that I went to him with, because I’m not going to use AI to solve the math problems. Also, it doesn’t know what it’s doing. So I would go to him and be like, “I’m really stuck, can you give me a hint?” And he would do that, which is great. But when it comes to a practice problem, I don’t want to go in and be like, “Can you give me a bunch of practice problems and sit there and solve them?” So there was that. I also feel like, for me, with the way that my schedule has been because I’m an overworker, so I tend to be like, overloading on credits, working two jobs and running a bunch of student organizations. I don’t have time to go into a professor’s office hours. I could send them an email, but a lot of the time, I find that communication to just be a little bit ineffective. We’re on different time schedules, so when you reply to me, I might not be able to reply for a bit. So there’s that side of it too, where, like, I’m not available during your office hours. I’m honestly not available when you’re awake, most likely. So I can’t really make that work. And so a lot of the time, it’s easier to have something that’s available whenever I have that five minutes to work on a problem, instead of like, “Oh, I have five minutes, let me email them and see if, in this five minutes, they can give me practice problems.” So there was that as well. And then, especially for students like me who struggle with anxiety, going to talk to your professor is like, one of the hardest things that you will ever have to do in college. Like, it’s just really intimidating. And if you don’t feel close to them already, it’s really hard, at least for me, to go into their office and have that one-on-one interaction. With professors that I bonded with throughout the class, throughout the year, like at the end of the year, sure, I’ll go to your office hours, but at the beginning of the year, when I don’t really know you yet and I’m not comfortable around you, that’s just too difficult for me, and so having AI there as a backup and as an extra resource is really helpful.
Rebecca: Thanks for sharing those. I think those are hard things sometimes for students to articulate and say, but I think it’s a common experience for a lot of students. I think one thing that you’ve pointed out, and I’m really curious how you got there, was being able to fully articulate what exactly you needed. So because you were able to say, “this is what I need” to the tool you could get what you needed. But sometimes people aren’t quite at that point, and you hinted at maybe there was times when you weren’t quite sure what you needed. Can you talk a little bit about how you develop some of those skills to be able to articulate what you need?
Kaija: Yeah, so I like to say that I’m a pretty self-aware person, so that certainly helps, like, I am a little bit better at being like, “Okay, this is an area that I’m struggling” or I know what I need right now, but there are obviously times when I’m like, “I have no idea.” So sometimes I had AI help me with it, like I would tell it, maybe just throw things at it, just like word vomit into it, and then have it be like, “Okay, this is what it looks like your problem is,” because it somehow can pick that out. But also sometimes it was like, just using my resources, so looking back through tests or the homework and figuring out where did I get stuck there, and really diving into it and thinking deeply about like, “Okay, I know I can’t solve this problem, but why can’t I solve it? What is it that I’m confused? Do I just not know the definition? Or is it I’m halfway through the problem and I just can’t get to the next step?” So it’s really a lot of kind of talking to yourself. For me, I do that out loud, and it really helps. But just like, having that conversation with yourself about, like, “Okay, let’s really think about this problem, and let’s really think about what part of it is confusing,” or “Let’s think about this class as a whole, and why are my grades not as high as they should be? Where is that problem?” So, like, part of it for me, like I said before, was really just that I wasn’t paying attention in class, and that is something AI can’t help me with. AI cannot help me study for a class if I don’t even know what’s going on in the class. So that was something that I had to be like, “Okay, this is a me problem, and I need to figure out a way to fix it so that then I can use AI as a supplemental resource.”
John: One of the things that’s been in the news a lot are student and sometimes parent reactions to faculty using AI to generate questions, problem sets, and other things. How do students react, in general, to faculty use from what you’ve heard from other students and your own reactions?
Kaija: Honestly, I haven’t heard a crazy amount about it. I think that for the most part we get it. We’re like, “hey, whatever.” I mean, as long as you’re still teaching us, as long as we’re still learning like, “it’s okay that you’re using it,” but where we get stuck is, “how come you can use it to teach us, but we can’t use it to teach ourselves?” That is the part that bothers me. I’m totally okay with you using AI to help you generate the syllabus, generate the questions that you’re going to ask, the learning objectives, like, that’s fine. I don’t really care. But if you can do it, then why can’t I? And to me, it makes that gap between us more. I understand that the professor is above me and standing like, that’s fine. I’m okay with that, but I want, at the same time to feel as respected by them as I’m supposed to respect them. And so when you say, like, “Well, I can use it because I know how to use it responsibly, but I don’t trust you to use it responsibly.” That’s where I kind of have a problem, where it’s like you need to respect students in the same way that you would expect them to respect you. So if you want your students to be okay with you using AI to assist you with the learning objectives, the curriculum, whatever it is, then you also need to be okay with students using it to assist them.
Rebecca: Well Kaija, this has been really great, but we always wrap up by asking, “what’s next?”
Kaija: Yeah, so who knows? So, as I said on the last one, I’m moving to North Dakota. I do have an apartment set up. So moving in on the 15th of August, which is exciting, still looking for a job, which is terrifying. Currently, hopefully I’m going to have one. I’m going in for like, the third round of interviews. So that’s hopefully a good sign with one company, and otherwise, I’m just really, really hoping to do something in human resources out in North Dakota for a couple years and then hopefully come back here.
John: Well, it’s been great talking to you, and we really appreciate your willingness to join us for these two conversations. And we hope everything goes well.
Kaija: Thank you.
Rebecca: Yeah. Best wishes on your job search.
Kaija: Thank you.
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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