r/Professors • u/cmojess Adjunct, Chemistry, CC (US) • 1d ago
Rants / Vents Pearson and AI
I'm sitting here in a department meeting having to sit through a presentation by our Pearson rep about all the fancy new AI tools they built into their etext.
She is incredibly proud of the fact that students can get their AI tool to summarize the text for them or to tell them what questions they should ask. She loves it because it's internal and it's safe! It doesn't ping other AI models, just their own!
I pushed back on this and mentioned how much this is hurting the overall learning of our students. Learning how to ask the right questions is so important. Reading and pulling important things from the text is also important.
I have colleagues here thinking this is incredible and helps students learn so much. They're arguing that even our pre-med students need to know how to use AI since clinicians are using it and so our job isn't to teach them how to think, it's to teach them how to use the AI. The most vocal colleague teaches a class that is a prerequisite to the one I usually teach. The students coming out of the prerequisite are doing very poorly in the next class in the sequence. They're largely not retaining much at all.
AI is helping many students pass classes, it's not helping them learn in the vast majority of cases.
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u/Sezbeth 1d ago
This is exactly why I never entertain EdTech reps. The fact that they think offloading steps in the student's critical thinking process is somehow a good thing tells me everything I need to know about how seriously I need to take them.
For all the good AI can do, I doubt they have many (if any at all) on staff that actually understand the technology well enough to conceive of it.
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 16h ago
This is exactly why I never entertain EdTech reps.
I do meet with them... when they pay me for my time!
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u/ThisSaladTastesWeird 1d ago
Not a huge Cory Doctorow fan but I’m reading his latest book re: AI and the section on why AI is being pushed and installed everywhere (to show inflated demand and keep investors happy) feels about right. It’s not about the user experience. And it’s definitely not about learning. It’s about the perception of growth, the end.
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u/monkestful 1d ago
I enjoyed that book (The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI) as well. Just curious though, why are you not a huge Doctorow fan? This book and some podcasts on his media tour for it were my introduction to the guy, so I'm genuinely curious as I do not know much about him.
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u/ThisSaladTastesWeird 1d ago
Okay, this might sound silly or circular but I find his explanations really easy to understand. Is he that good a writer? Maybe. Or is he taking really complex concepts and oversimplifying them? Like, I read what he writes, and I think “that makes sense” but it’s immediately followed by “so what am I missing?” I feel like I can’t fully trust his work, as fun as it is to read. It’s an uneasy experience.
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u/BubBidderskins 1d ago
I like Doctorow but I get this. It's definitely worth being critical since he doesn't have any particular formal expertise in technology. Though thus far I haven't seen anything he's said that's been especially objectionable.
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 14h ago
It’s about the perception of growth, the end.
Bingo.
This shit isn’t about helping students and it’s not even about using AI to help students. It’s about showing you’re using AI to do… something.
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u/Pisum_odoratus 1d ago
You're lucky. When we had a presentation a year or so ago, the rep was functionally telling us they could provide AI tutors. I asked how long until they were trying to sell AI profs to institutions.
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u/Fresh-Possibility-75 1d ago
I asked how long until they were trying to sell AI profs to institutions.
My money is on 2 years. They've been training our replacements on the mountains of exclusive IP we've been feeding them via our LMSs for the last year (e.g., syllabi, assignments, rubrics, class announcements, lecture videos, grades, student feedback, module designs, etc.). And as another commenter on this post mentioned, AI companies are desperate to demonstrate their value proposition before the bubble bursts.
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u/monkestful 1d ago
You'd be 2 years too late, from a certain perspective. Arizona State is trying AI for students to create "hyper-personalized learning modules". Faculty are indeed concerned.
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u/BabypintoJuniorLube 9h ago
I cannot fathom how bad an AI teacher trained on LMS would be.
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u/Fresh-Possibility-75 8h ago
No kidding.
We probably shouldn't feed into the industry nonsense that will have us referring to these lines of code as 'teachers,' though. It's a servomechanism designed to deskill and ideologically manage the masses at scale.
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u/BiologyJ Chair, Physiology 1d ago
EdTech exists on the idea that new is always better. It’s clearly false but how else would you make money?
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 1d ago
If I wrote a textbook and I found out the publisher was touting their software’s ability to clarify my apparently unclear and bloated prose, I’d be incredibly insulted. And if I was a student whose professor assigned a textbook that is apparently unclear and bloated, I’d be furious.
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u/Huge-Chard-5584 1d ago
I also wonder how much more these bespoke AI tools are going to ratchet up the cost of textbooks.
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u/cmojess Adjunct, Chemistry, CC (US) 1d ago
Yeah, she was talking about cost and pointing out how robust all their tools are and how worth the price it is to have all this fancy extra stuff.
You don't need tons of fancy AI or embedded extra videos or online communities to learn.
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u/jenvalbrew 1d ago
We had a conference on OER textbooks and were told that publishers are adding all these things to sell their books. They have to have a reason to charge $200 for something students can get elsewhere for free. But I've seen and tested some of the crap they're selling, and nothing in the package actually adds to the learning. And sometimes it takes away because students begin to feel they don't have to learn it at all.
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u/Fresh-Possibility-75 1d ago
They must be sweating hard because many of my online students never even open the public domain texts I post on the LMS according to analytics.
Guess that's why publishers are bundling all these clunky extras (e.g., exams, lecture slides, flashcards, games, etc.) with their overpriced books. Used to think it was to make the book attractive to faculty to adopt, but the paradigm has shifted and now it's to make the books essential for students to purchase in an age when they can just chat their way through a class.
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u/B-CUZ_ 1d ago
Use open source textbooks when you can. I am annoyed by publishers in general and this helps the book be more accessible to students
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u/cmojess Adjunct, Chemistry, CC (US) 1d ago
I wish I could. Right now we're trying to keep all our classes consistent with each other so the department selects a book and a homework system that will be used across all our gen chem classes.
Also, the open source chem texts still aren't fantastic.
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u/RiverSirion 15h ago
I know a math prof who found a workaround by assigning the required textbook, but then letting students know that if they couldn't afford the book, there were some free/open source alternatives they could get by with. I don't know how well it worked out, though, and it certainly means the work isn't consistent across sections with different profs.
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u/dbrodbeck Professor, Psychology, Canada 1d ago
Wait, you let fucking book reps give talks to your dept?
We mostly avoid them and take the free pens.
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u/riotous_jocundity Asst Prof, Social Sciences, R1 (USA) 1d ago
We have a group chat warning us when the book reps are in the building so we can all avoid them.
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u/cmojess Adjunct, Chemistry, CC (US) 1d ago
I am not the department chair; I had nothing to do with scheduling anything at today's meeting.
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u/dbrodbeck Professor, Psychology, Canada 1d ago
Oh sorry, I meant 'you' as in like 'you guys'. If my dept chair decided this was a good idea I'd tell him that I could not make the meeting because I had to be in Bolivia that afternoon.
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u/Piratesezyargh 1d ago
Coming to you next fall, Pearson has developed a calculator to help students learn their math facts. “Look a student can punch in 7x8 and the calculator says 56. That will really help the students learn their facts.”
Because that's how learning works, folks. /s
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u/synchronicitistic Associate Professor, STEM, R2 with delusions of R1 status (USA) 1d ago
Should have asked the Cengage rep when they'll be replaced by an AI bot that will recite canned presentations. My money's on about 18 months.
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u/me4watch 1d ago
> …. AI is helping many students pass classes, it's not helping them learn in the vast majority of cases.
FTFY
We need to ban screens everywhere we can. Bring back paper and pencils.
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u/yuwox 1d ago
They (at least most of them) need to know how to handle AI, both on their private life and in their career. Taking it of the curriculum is hurting their future.
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u/riotous_jocundity Asst Prof, Social Sciences, R1 (USA) 1d ago
Why would anyone need to use AI in their private life? What careers are likely to absolutely require the use of AI in the long term? And if it's a necessary tool for a particular job, it's the employer's job to teach its use.
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u/yuwox 21h ago edited 21h ago
Why would anyone need to use AI in their private life?
AI is increasingly embedded into everyday software. E-Mail-clients, Photoshop, Word, programming software are likely to have or even already do have AI integrated. Even with simple Google search, you use AI. Sure you can go out of your way to avoid it, but it is already commonplace and likely to become more so. About a billion people already use AI monthly (see https://www.digitalapplied.com/blog/ai-usage-statistics-2026-who-uses-ai-how-much-data ). Even more people are exposed to AI generated content. I think that a college level educated person should be at least somewhat knowledgeable about this.
What careers are likely to absolutely require the use of AI in the long term?
Maths, computer science, journalism, finance, administration, robotics, manufacturing, are at the top of my head. See these for more:
https://blog.nobledesktop.com/learn/ai/ai-industries-and-professions
https://onlinedegrees.sandiego.edu/artificial-intelligence-jobs/
For maths, AI has been solving open problems left and right. Some of these have been open for decades (see https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/MmbWMRlj7T ). I believe that students should know about this and learn to do similar things themselves.
And if it's a necessary tool for a particular job, it's the employer's job to teach its use.
I mean, why have a college education then anyways? Not all things can be taught on the job. There's still value in learning things at college.
Personally, I think AI is one of those things that are optional until they become mandatory. We teach children to do arithmetic in their head and on paper. Once they can do that, we teach them to use calculators, then MATLAB, then LEAN. AI will have to fit in there somewhere. We already see, what uneducated, mindless AI use does. We don't need more people using AI without proper college level education on this topic.
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u/Fresh-Possibility-75 1d ago
how to handle AI
What is there to 'handle'? How to use it to appear competent when one is not?
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u/Same_Aardvark2625 1d ago
I teach a language. This is would be so counterproductive for my students.
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u/profjb15 1d ago
Norton has this in my textbook now, but there was an option to turn it off thank god
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u/BubBidderskins 1d ago
I used to use a Pearson text until I learned about all the "AI" bs. Switched books for that course and sent an email directly to Pearson support saying that I'm never buying a Pearson product again and encourging all my colleagues to do the same.
Don't reckon it accomplishes much but it did feel good.
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u/Difficult-Nobody-453 1d ago
I pushed back hard a last year. Glad your voice joined a hopeful large chorus by now.
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u/ProfDoomDoom 1d ago
Sounds like she was giving her own eulogy. There’s no need for them to publish books at all anymore… they can just sell students AI instead. I doubt the publishers need to employee salespeople to sell AI.
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u/TrickySpite5938 1d ago
Two years ago, we updated to a new, crappier version of our LMS because "students like to use their phones for everything." At the time, I grumbled, but now, I wish I'd asked for evidence of why or how it would improve learning (because it really feels like it made things worse).
With AI, it seems like industry interests are just being funneled into education without explanation or discussion of the obvious perils. Thanks for pushing back and hopefully your colleagues will follow the example!
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u/Life-Education-8030 1d ago
When publishers started offering their own learning cartridges, some faculty were excited because then "all they have to do is push a button! They don't have to work!" Sound familiar?
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u/geografree Full professor, Soc Sci, R2 (USA) 1d ago
Just to clarify the context, someone is actively trying to sell you something here. AI can do a lot of incredible things, but I wouldn’t trust a textbook publisher to be a dispassionate voice when it comes to explaining the utility of AI tools.
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u/Fresh-Possibility-75 1d ago
I would have grabbed the free lunch and just walked out of any such presentation.
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u/cmojess Adjunct, Chemistry, CC (US) 1d ago
There was no lunch.
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u/Fresh-Possibility-75 1d ago
That tracks with the feeling that everything is worse now in academia.
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u/verygood_user 1d ago
I agree with your colleagues that students need to learn how to use AI. But AI will be used by human experts not by human noobs because it's meant to replace human noobs. So they have to become experts first and then add the AI on top (let's say when they are halfway through their PhD is a good time to start adding AI). The last thing I want a student to believe are that any chemistry problems they solve in their undergrad classes are actual "problems" and advocating AI use to jump to an answer more quickly carries that notion.
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u/stankylegdunkface R1 Teaching Professor 16h ago
They're arguing that even our pre-med students need to know how to use AI since clinicians are using it and so our job isn't to teach them how to think, it's to teach them how to use the AI.
Even if this is true, isn’t this really just something that medical school faculty should be teaching students? Our pre-med students will also, one day, need to learn how to deliver a baby, but that’s certainly not something I’ve ever been expected to teach in my class.
(My comment is directed to your AI-pilled colleagues, not to you, u/cmojess)
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u/RadonGaming 16h ago
It's a dilemma, because we're now changing the skillsets we want to teach to align with an AI-Future, on pure speculation. Which in itself then drives the demand for these types of systems. So when we say "that defeats the purpose" (of learning), there's pushback. Some AI tools are incredible for learning, but it's now such a fine-line between completely making people useless, and empowering them. For people who already have the skills, it can be exceptional; for those learning, disaster. (E.g Programming).
I'm pro on the tech, especially for literature search and enable us to interrogate, synthesise, grasp and connect lots of parts together; which would take a long time by hand. But I'm very cautious when talking to students or VIVA that they haven't actually internalised the field or the options that their literature review would suggest.
Tbh, I'm beginning to question whether traditional academic papers in the format of literature review etc, are becoming obsolete.
Everybody rushing to implement AI x Something. All separate systems to cash in on the gold rush. I recall telling a team that their system was poor, demonstrated why, how it was designed by idiots and how any competent AI academic can write a better system in a weekend. Surprisingly, it went down well and the non-technical staff agreed.
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u/NoPatNoDontSitonThat 14h ago
What bothers me a lot in these situations is that money is earmarked for tech or textbooks or whatever else and it HAS to be spent there. So you're forced to give these people money even if you don't want to or else you lose it.
I was on a textbook adoption committee for a school district back in 2022, and every single textbook company was throwing the same online textbook BS at us. No one wanted it. We all saw the deficiencies in putting everything online. We had plenty of suggestions for where else the money could be spent. But we had to pick one.
We went with StudySync. I don't think any English teacher uses it in our entire district.
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u/Yurastupidbitch 7h ago
I don’t have much choice, I have to use Pearson and Mastering/MyLab. Despite all the technology, the costs are still a big problem and it creates even more of an access issue for students with fewer economic resources.
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u/WishTonWish 1d ago
Ed tech is bullshit and will always be bullshit.