Rise of AI Prompts New Approaches to Teaching Core Skills
Technological innovations have always reshaped teaching practices. From the introduction of the printing press to the proliferation of broadband internet, new communication tools and access to resources requires a thoughtful reconsideration of the way students learn.
So why does artificial intelligence feel different? Is it the speed with which AI tools have been embraced? Is it a need to research the impact of AI on cognition? Is it the question of what makes someone human as digital sentience appears closer than ever?
There is a range of views among the Elon University faculty about the benefits, risks, and opportunities of artificial intelligence. Despite these differences, some common themes are emerging:
- Artificial intelligence will continue to have an impact
- All students need to learn important skills including critical thinking, judgment, empathy, and verbal and written communication
- Elon’s culture of innovation supports multiple ways for faculty to respond to new technologies
Artificial intelligence is influencing the university’s daily work of learning, teaching and operating the institution. Across Elon, the impact is tangible:
- Students are applying AI tools to test ideas, refine arguments and simulate complex scenarios while developing ethical frameworks supported by resources such as Elon’s collaboration in developing the Student Guide to Artificial Intelligence series.
- Faculty are redesigning pedagogy, both when integrating AI tools in meaningful ways and when limiting their use to preserve key aspects of learning.
- Administrative workflows are accelerating, with tools such as Microsoft 365 Copilot and Adobe Firefly supporting communication and production.
- Elon partnered in 2025 with RTI International to explore relationships between AI and modern approaches to education, human agency, creativity, and well-being, and to create a shared research agenda.
Underpinning these efforts is an ongoing conversation about how AI should be approached in higher education. “AI shouldn’t come first,” said Assistant Professor Mustafa Akben, Elon University’s director of artificial intelligence integration. “Human needs, strategy and vision should instead be enabled by AI.”
Early Leadership and Rapid Action
Assistant Professor Mustafa Akben, director of artificial intelligence integration at Elon University
Elon University positioned itself early as a leader in conversations around artificial intelligence through its collaboration on a set of core principles to guide development of AI policies and practices at college and universities.
Created through an effort led by Elon and endorsed by 140 higher education organizations, administrators, researchers and faculty members from 48 countries, the statement was released in October 2023 at the 18th annual United Nations Internet Governance Forum in Kyoto, Japan.
Advancements soon followed at Elon University, starting with Mustafa Akben’s 2024 appointment as director of artificial intelligence integration. His work entails a wide-ranging, rapidly changing effort engaging faculty members, staff members, and students in workshops exploring the use of AI, and in making AI platforms, tools and resources available for use in Elon University’s teaching, learning and operations.
Akben, an assistant professor of management, highlighted initiatives such as an AI pedagogy challenge that drew dozens of faculty submissions and led to the creation of tailored custom chatbots. He also pointed to the development of an AI “sandbox” space designed to give students, faculty and staff access to advanced tools and collaborative opportunities, including the ability to build large language models.
Student involvement has been central, with scholarship and workspace programs training students as peer educators, researchers and developers. Akben said these experiences are preparing students for leadership roles while strengthening the university’s AI ecosystem.
More than 600 people registered to attend either in-person or via Zoom “The Human Edge: Our Future with Artificial Intelligences,” a daylong summit on Sept. 17, 2025, in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park co-hosted by RTI International and Elon University.
An innovation under pilot testing in the business school is an AI tutor, which can generate tailored quizzes as students are studying and inform teaching by providing information about student questions to faculty members. Early findings suggest it may contribute to exam performance when combined with standard practices, such as students analyzing notes from class and taking practice exams.
Elon moved quickly to address the rise of artificial intelligence, producing a student-focused guide within a year of ChatGPT’s debut, according to Daniel J. Anderson, special assistant to the president and lead author of the guide co-published with the American Association of Colleges & Universities and The Princeton Review.
“Universities cannot be timid about taking action, because they could get swamped in the changes that are taking place,” Anderson said. “Within a year of ChatGPT being introduced, we had a student guide in the marketplace because of our intellectual agility as an institution.”
Providing Resources and Support Systems to Nurture Curricular Creativity
Brandon Sheridan, an assistant professor of economics and a pedagogy fellow in Elon’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, described AI as a technology that raises urgent questions about equity, trust and course design.
Sheridan started to explore AI’s classroom implications years ago as he witnessed its growing use among students. His early concerns centered on unequal access to paid tools, which can produce more sophisticated work than free versions, creating disparities in learning outcomes. That equity gap has only widened as advanced paid systems improve.
AI also challenges traditional assessments used by professors, Sheridan said. Faculty can no longer assume that out-of-class assignments reflect student learning. The result is a broader rethinking of pedagogy focused on process rather than product. The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning encourages experimentation while accommodating a spectrum of views.
Despite concerns, AI offers practical benefits. It can help students perform more advanced work, such as generating code for data analysis, and allowing instructors to focus on interpretation and critical thinking rather than technical mechanics.
Sheridan likened the use of AI in some instances to driver education. “You don’t need to teach students how to manufacture a vehicle,” he said. “You’re trying to teach them how to drive it.”
Professor Paula Rosinski, a faculty member in professional writing and rhetoric, agrees on the need for faculty to rethink how they teach, assess and prepare students for the future.
Rosinski directs Elon’s Writing Across the University program and described AI as the most recent in a long evolution of writing technologies. From that perspective, integrating AI into coursework is an extension of helping students learn to critique and use technologies that have always shaped communication and knowledge-making.
Rather than ignoring or banning the technology, she said, institutions should foster open conversations about its benefits, limitations, ethical implications, and professional impacts, and strive to develop students’ AI critical and rhetorical literacies.
Rosinski acknowledged concerns about student overreliance on AI and its potential impact on critical thinking. To that end, effective teaching continues to depend upon designing scaffolded, engaged learning experiences that discourage misuse while helping students understand when and how to use AI responsibly.
That has led to faculty experimenting with new approaches, from AI-focused writing courses and chatbots that challenge student thinking to research grants and interdisciplinary collaboration. The moment, Rosinski said, demands flexibility and reflection: “It makes us rethink everything about education.”
Innovation Also Fuels Approaches to Teaching … Without AI
Associate Professor Ariela Marcus-Sells
Ariela Marcus-Sells, an associate professor of religious studies, is among those scholars at Elon University who support teaching practices focused on learning outcomes not well served by AI.
Marcus-Sells emphasized that there are core skills that depend on independent thinking and productive struggle, processes that can be undermined by overreliance on AI tools. At the same time, the widespread availability of AI has also disrupted traditional assignments. Faculty can no longer assume that out-of-class work reflects student originality.
In response, Marcus-Sells and several of her colleagues across disciplines have created a community of practice that develops and shares pedagogical techniques for teaching without AI. At the same time, a broader group of faculty has advocated for a designation to identify courses that are AI-free in the university’s online course registration system.
Marcus-Sells added that teaching in an AI-saturated environment requires significant innovation, as instructors redesign courses to maintain meaningful engagement, protect academic integrity and ensure that students actively participate in their own learning.
“One of the things that has impressed me most is just how good Elon faculty are at organizing themselves and coming together around a common and shared purpose and instigating change within the university,” she said. “When I talk with colleagues at other institutions, I get the sense they don’t feel there’s a space to do that to the same extent.”
A Framework for Moving Forward
For Sarah Bunnell, the emergence of artificial intelligence is less a disruption to manage than an opportunity to reexamine the purpose of higher education.
The director of Elon University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning frames AI as a moment that invites deeper reflection on how students learn and why faculty teach. Rather than prescribing a single path, she emphasizes the importance of holding space for multiple viewpoints across campus, from enthusiastic adopters like Akben to those like Marcus-Sells who see value in limiting or excluding AI from the classroom.
That approach is rooted in Elon’s longstanding commitment to the scholarship of teaching and learning, where faculty treat pedagogy as an ongoing, evidence-based inquiry. Bunnell said instructors are well positioned to meet this moment because they are already trained to ask critical questions, analyze outcomes and adapt their practices to support student growth.
Through workshops, communities of practice and cross-campus dialogue, the university is working to provide faculty with the time and support to explore AI’s implications—both its possibilities and its limits.
The goal, Bunnell said, is to ensure that innovation remains intentional and aligned with student learning. The path forward lies in curiosity, collaboration and a renewed focus on helping students think critically, engage deeply and understand what it means to learn together in a changing world.
“The level of dialogue around AI is elevated at Elon, because the people we have in the classroom are elevated scholars and teachers and mentors,” Bunnell said. “AI is a productive disruption in higher education if we let it be.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Start with learning, not technology.
Define how AI supports core educational goals before adopting tools. Prioritize critical thinking, ethical reasoning and student development. Align AI use to those outcomes. - Support multiple pedagogical approaches.
Encourage both integration and limitation of AI in the classroom. Faculty should have the autonomy to experiment with AI or design courses that preserve learning experiences less compatible with it. - Invest in spaces for experimentation.
Create infrastructure that enables innovation such as faculty challenges, collaborative labs and pilot programs. Progress is driven by hands-on exploration, not policy alone.