On Friday, the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, in collaboration with the University Library, began private discussions between student and faculty teams in its new Seminar on AI Literacy.
Throughout the seminar, 10 three-person teams will create or alter an undergraduate or graduate level class to facilitate student development of AI literacy in different disciplines, according to Eric Kaldor, the program’s coordinator and director of assessment and transformational programs at the Sheridan Center.
The seminar’s teams each include a faculty member and a student from the course’s intended audience. Courses being remodeled in the program range in subjects from chemistry to East Asian studies, said Associate Provost for Artificial Intelligence Michael Littman.
Applicants to the program were asked to “express a commitment” to offer the class discussed in the seminar by the end of the 2027-28 academic year.
According to Kaldor, the seminars are intended to empower faculty to feel like they can “make a difference” in the University’s approach to AI.
Kaldor said that many of the faculty members who joined the seminars wanted to “rethink assessments.” Some faculty members told Kaldor that they want students to learn how to do research, but now, with growing use of AI, assigning research papers “doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
Kaldor said that initial conversations around AI literacy focused on tool-use fluency. “Now, it’s much clearer that (AI literacy involves) critical thinking, ethical reasoning, centering human values, doing metacognitive reflection and tying in your expertise in a specific domain.”
Littman stressed the importance of a department-specific approach. In departments like English, there is a “real concern” that improper AI usage will cause students to “lose (their) ability to think,” he said.
During the first month of the seminar, the student and faculty groups will experiment with AI tools in their specific domains. The latter portion of the seminar will focus on course design.
One team in the seminar is investigating how students learn to write in foreign languages through tools like Grammarly. “There’s a lot of ways that that could undermine student learning,” Kaldor said. For example, AI grammar editors can damage an individual’s development of their own voice, he said. “We want you to be able to still be in control of your writing.”
The seminar comes as concerns about AI and education have proliferated in the past year, especially after an incident of widespread cheating on an economics take-home midterm last spring.
The Herald spoke to students on how they feel the University should implement AI — if at all. They had mixed opinions.
Jonathan Viene ’29, an international and public affairs concentrator said, “It’s probably a good idea to at least try it out, but I’d like to see the University steer clear of AI as much as they can.” Viene added that he does not use AI for his own work.
“It seems like Brown and (its) educators are trying their best,” Aditi Borra ’28 said. She added that it can be difficult to “draw the line between academic honesty or dishonesty” while also “matching the way the (AI) industry is moving.”
Borra added that she thinks AI usage should vary by department, with STEM classes requiring different policies than humanities classes, where “you want students to be able to write using their own brains.”
Jon Corbin ’28 said he believes AI “should stay out of the humanities entirely.” He said AI stifles the “creative works you’re meant to create” in these courses.
Through the seminar, Kaldor hopes that addressing common concerns will bring the University together.
“One of the things we’re trying to overcome is sometimes there’s a portion of Brown’s community that feels like people are forcing them to use AI.” Kaldor added that AI literacy is not about forcing people to adopt new technology but rather “about trying to maintain your choices.”
