{"id":962,"date":"2026-01-29T20:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidtrend.com\/?p=962"},"modified":"2026-02-03T00:24:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T00:24:25","slug":"ai-thrives-where-instruction-falters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidtrend.com\/?p=962","title":{"rendered":"AI Thrives where Instruction Falters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Old-fashioned instruction based on the recitation of facts is driving learners to AI tools like ChatGPT.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 When learning is reduced to scores and “answers,” students naturally seek the most efficient paths to get them\u00a0 This has become especially common in courses relying on grade coercion and threats of failure to drive motivation.\u00a0\u00a0Such effects of teacher-centered instruction are particularly harmful to the growing numbers of students working while in school or juggling other responsibilities.<\/p>\n

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The equity side of this is hardly is incidental at a time when AI competence has become widely recognized as a vital job skill and an key component of civic literacy. Institutions that fear and discourage AI are contributing to growing knowledge gap between those with the intellectual tools to critically assess truth claims and others more likely to accept directives from authoritarian figures.<\/p>\n

Not helping matters are latent attitudes that cast suspicion on today\u2019s increasingly diverse population of college students. Amid a rising moral panic within the U.S. academia, recent surveys show an alarming 78 percent of U.S. faculty believing that cheating is on the rise and that AI is to blame. According to Beth McMurtie in the\u00a0Chronicle of Higher Ed<\/em>, \u201cVirtually all of those surveyed \u2014 95 percent \u2014 fear that students will become over-reliant on these tools. And 83 percent think it will decrease students\u2019 attention spans.\u201d\u00a0[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Early in the 2020s a torrent of news reports warned of an \u201cepidemic\u201d of dishonesty in online learning, with some surveys showing over 90 percent educators believing cheating occurred more in distance education than in-person instruction.[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0New technologies often have stoked such fears, in this instance building on the distrust many faculty hold toward students, some of it racially inflected.\u00a0[4]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Closer examination of the issue has revealed that much of the worry came from faculty with little direct knowledge of the digital classroom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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All of this is fueling an academic culture that drives students to seek answers at any cost while simultaneously criminalizing unauthorized methods for finding them. Behind this mindset is what can only be described as a commodified approach to knowledge as a precious and rare commodity that can only be exchanged regulated ways. While institutions rarely want to admit this explicitly, the message is that only certain kind of people can create and circulate wisdom.<\/p>\n

<\/span>The premise of knowledge as commodity is nowhere more apparent than in the near-universal use of AI-detection and anti-plagiarism software, the most common brands of which are GPTZero, Turnitin, Unicheck, Copyscape and Grammarly. Ownership of ideas is the whole point of these companies, as well as an emphasis on originality, individualism, and the threat of theft.\u00a0\u00a0But to thrive these companies have the tricky task of naming a risk but keeping their messaging positive. Often this is accomplished through appeal to moral idealism. While Copyscape takes the direct approach (\u201cWho\u2019s stealing your content?\u201d), most of the\u00a0industry makes softer appeals.[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Unicheck wants to \u201cpromote academic integrity\u201d and Turnitin promises to \u201cempower students to do their best, original work.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Ironically, many of these companies themselves abscond with knowledge by retaining copies of texts run through their detection systems. The vast majority of students are unaware when submitting a paper that they are unwittingly becoming part of an unpaid labor pool. Turnitin has the largest such database with 200 million student papers.[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In this sense Turnitin and similar services function much in the spirit of online giants like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for which billions of users provide free content.<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that this is not the only way of looking at instruction, and many inside and outside of higher education have other points of view. Principles of emancipatory pedagogy and student-centered learning date to the progressive school movement of the 1900s. And in contemporary times, the effectiveness of non-hierarchical approaches to instruction have been repeatedly validated in evidence based educational research. The only problem is that within colleges and universities that depend on research dollars for their operating budgets, enlightened approaches toward teaching are surprisingly rare, and regressive attitudes toward everything from AI to student voice still rule the day.<\/p>\n

None of this is to deny the legitimate need for objective and accurate means of assessment in certain kinds of instruction. Certainly, in fields preparing practitioners or researchers in fields where health and safety are at stake, or where precision is required, there is a genuine societal need for comprehensive knowledge verification.\u00a0\u00a0But even in fields like engineering and medicine the importance of critical consciousness remains valued pedagogically and in professional practice inasmuch as knowledge evolves and contexts of application can differ.<\/p>\n

What ultimately distinguishes these two approaches is a fundamentally different understanding of what knowledge is and how it comes to be. The surveillance paradigm treats knowledge as a fixed body of information to be guarded by credentialed authorities and verified through standardized measures that test possession rather than understanding. This assumes truth exists independently of context, that expertise means mastering established facts, and that learning means accurately reproducing received wisdom. But an alternative view recognizes knowledge as something perpetually under construction, shaped by the questions we ask and the problems we encounter. From this perspective, learning to think critically about sources and evaluate competing claims matters more than memorizing answers.<\/p>\n

The irony is that students already grasp this when they turn to AI for help. They recognize that knowledge emerges through inquiry and dialogue rather than transmission and testing. The tragedy is that institutions respond by doubling down on verification rather than reimagining education around the collaborative and fundamentally social nature of knowing itself.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0The phrase. \u201cAI Thrives where Instruction Falters\u201d is frequently used by Dan Fitzpatrick in his podcast series \u201cAI for Educators Daily\u201d and regular contributions to\u00a0Forbes Magazine<\/em>, https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/danfitzpatrick\/<\/p>\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Beth McMurtrie, \u201cTeaching: Faculty Are Overwhelmed and Conflicted by AI,\u201d\u00a0Chronicle of Higher Education\u00a0<\/em>(Jan. 22, 2026) https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/newsletter\/teaching\/2026-01-22.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Dian Schaffhauser, \u201cInstructors Believe Students More Likely to Cheat when Class is Online,\u201d\u00a0Campus Technology<\/em>\u00a0(Aug. 4, 2020) https:\/\/campustechnology.com\/articles\/2020\/08\/04\/instructors-believe-students-more-likely-to-cheat-when-class-is-online.aspx.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Elizabeth Redden, \u201cProfessor Accused of Saying \u2018All Chinese Students Cheat\u2019 Resigns,\u201d\u00a0Inside Higher Ed<\/em>\u00a0(Mar. 13, 2019) https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/quicktakes\/2019\/03\/13\/professor-accused-saying-all-chinese-students-cheat-resigns.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u201cAbout Plagiarism,\u201d\u00a0Copyscape\u00a0<\/em>(2021) https:\/\/www.copyscape.com\/plagiarism.php.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u201cPlagiarism Detection for Education,\u201d Unicheck, (2021); \u201cEmpower Students to Do Their Best, Original Work,\u201d Turnitin (2021) https:\/\/www.turnitin.com\/php.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cFAQ: Turnitin for Students,\u201d BUE Student Guide (2020) https:\/\/bue.libguides.com\/Turnitin2_Students\/ContactTurnitinAdministrators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Old-fashioned instruction based on the recitation of facts is driving learners to AI tools like ChatGPT.[1]\u00a0 When learning is reduced to scores and “answers,” students naturally seek the most efficient paths to get them\u00a0 This has become especially common in courses relying on grade coercion and threats of failure to drive motivation.\u00a0\u00a0Such effects of teacher-centered … <\/p>\n

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