BC3 considers AI approach with new task force
Butler County Community College leadership is looking to be ahead of the curve by embracing a future with artificial intelligence.
The community college announced it had launched a new task force at its Sept. 17 board of trustees meeting that aims to develop recommendations for the college on questions surrounding AI within academics.
The task force is called “Project Beta: AI in Action.” BC3 president Megan Coval said the 15-person task force will allow faculty and staff to explore responsible and innovative uses of AI and provide guidance to members of the BC3 community on how to responsibly include AI into its functions.
“Faculty and staff had to apply and indicate why they wanted to learn more about AI and incorporate it more into their work. Ultimately, they’re going to be charged with recommendations about how we can better incorporate AI into our classrooms, into policy, training; and they’ll share the results with members of the BC3 community,” Coval said.
Mike Dittman, a BC3 English professor, said general discussions around AI in various departments really began early last school year, and were largely based around how to prevent students from cheating, but have since evolved.
Dittman, who is part of the AI task force, said there has been a clear shift in the way BC3, among other colleges and educational institutions, have been thinking about AI’s role in education.
“This is not setting rules or telling people how to use AI. It’s people from faculty and staff, administration, different campuses, a cohort of people who are currently using AI in classrooms and jobs or want to learn about it,” Dittman said. “There’s a spectrum of experience in this group. We have someone who hasn’t used AI before to someone who has servers in their household with their own chatbot.”
He said the task force will look at best practices, discuss what it might mean for education, what the appropriate uses are, and when it is OK to use or not. At the end of the fall semester, the task force will reach out to the campus community and report on what they’ve learned while serving as “AI ambassadors.”
The importance, he said, is twofold: instructors are staying a step ahead on the role of the technology in academics and students are learning to use AI in responsible ways, especially as careers are altered by the use of AI.
“It sounds congratulatory, but I’ve got to say, BC3 is way, way ahead of a lot of the other regional institutions in terms of thinking about AI and embracing it,” Dittman said. “When AI first came out, there was that panic of, ‘oh my gosh, students aren’t going to write anything,’ but to the institution’s credit, we’ve very swiftly changed gears to how we can teach students to use this tool effectively. What kinds of skills are employers looking for? And that’s something we’ve talked a lot about.”
BC3’s approach to AI has trickled down too. It includes a new version of an introductory English course created last year and taught by Dittman that’s based around the impacts of AI.
Dittman said the class is about more than just reading articles about AI. His classwork includes exploring the ethics of AI and important questions such as when, why and how to use it. One of the things his coursework includes is having students come up with a thesis and using AI to generate counter arguments.
He’s gotten mixed reactions from students at BC3. While some students are open to the idea of AI being more incorporated into their curriculum, he said, some are completely against it philosophically, due to concerns such as the environmental impact.
In Pennsylvania, the environmental impact of artificial intelligence data centers is a growing concern. There is also proposed legislation in the Pennsylvania General Assembly to protect residents from being impacted by rising energy costs from AI data centers.
But BC3, like other schools, are actively dealing with AI and pondering how their students should handle its presence.
“The idea behind this was basically that it’s here. The students are using it. Governmental bodies seem reluctant to put any guardrails on it, so how are we going to teach students to use it effectively?” Dittman said.
