Abstract
Much discourse about Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in education focuses on how many teachers fear that students will utilize it to “cheat” by finding ways to complete assignments without learning. A minority of positive stories about GenAI in education include stories about how instructors effectively incorporate into their instruction to enable students to better understand the shortcomings of GenAI technology, typically portraying stories as enthusiastically embracing the technology. Yet I have not read accounts of an instructor who tried to enthusiastically embrace and incorporate the technology into only a portion of their lessons only to encounter strong resistance and even rejection by students of these efforts, and then even had the university administration side with the students in opposition to the instructor. In this auto-ethnography, I describe, analyze, and reflect on having such a recent experience I had as a junior instructor for a Masters of Arts introductory sociology class in which I encountered resistance and complaints from students about in-class group activities that encouraged them to learn from each other and GenAI. Although my experience is merely a N of 1 and may be a fluke or outlier with regards to the overall population of experiments with GenAI, I hope that it may serve as a cautionary tale for other idealistic instructors who erroneously believe they will 1) encounter enthusiasm among their students with regards to incorporating the new technology into the education and 2) have the institutional support to expand the use of GenAI in the classroom.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Technology, Education, Sociology, Resistance, Human Intelligence, Generative Artificial Intelligence, Asia
