How To Turn AI Into a Friend Rather Than a Foe in the Classroom
Many institutions are approaching AI primarily as a threat, which impacts how they’re choosing to modernize their classrooms.
“There’s a focus on plagiarism and the disingenuous work being turned in by students, which is valid, but I challenge everyone to look at the bigger picture,” Shippee says.
He adds that treating AI as the enemy of academia limits what institutions will build. The irony, he says, is that the more universities focus on controlling AI, the more they risk missing out on the ways it can strengthen instruction when used intentionally.
Shippee doesn’t see AI as something that replaces good teaching; he sees it as something that builds on it. If a professor is known for dynamic lectures and great storytelling, AI can help that content live beyond the hour it’s delivered. A recorded lecture can quickly turn into a podcast-style study tool that students can revisit later, especially when they’re stuck on a tricky concept. The point isn’t to reinvent how someone teaches. It’s to take what already works and give it a longer shelf life for students.
How To Prepare Your Classroom for AI-Enhanced Learning
Shippee’s AI-ready checklist begins with the quality of the classroom experience itself. He adds that visualization and audio capture become even more important when institutions begin layering AI on top of teaching.
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“The visualization of information is critical,” he says, “as in big, bright screens that are showing information that complements an instructional lecture.”
Modeling, or showing how to do something, is another core instructional practice that can be supported by AI. For example, he says, if he were teaching the Pythagorean Theorem, he might draw a triangle on the display, label two sides and put a question mark on one of them. Then, to demonstrate how AI can function as a DIY learning tool, he’d use a feature such as Google’s Circle to Search, circling the problem on the screen so the AI can walk students through how to solve for the missing side. That way, students aren’t just seeing the formula, they’re seeing how it works in action.
Shippee also emphasizes the importance of audio. A good microphone is essential. If a professor wants to record a session and generate summaries or study assets from it, the input quality has to be good enough for the output to be trustworthy and useful.
How Budget Influences AI Adoption in the Classroom
For institutions with limited budgets, Shippee suggests prioritizing products that have thoughtfully integrated AI into existing hardware workflows, so that the capability doesn’t require a major new platform investment or a complicated add-on strategy.
Samsung, for example, makes interactive displays that can capture a lecture as an MP3, generate a structured and shareable summary, and even create an in-the-moment quiz, so instructors can quickly gauge comprehension.
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The goal is not to tack on flashy features but to embed AI into everyday workflows, Shippee says. “Just like if you were to buy a laptop today, it would already have an internet browser on it.”
In the Future, AI Will Support Rather Than Subvert Education
For Shippee, the conversation about AI ultimately comes back to one thing: critical thinking. The job of higher education is not simply to deliver information. It is to help students evaluate it, challenge it and make sense of it. And in that sense, AI may actually strengthen rather than sabotage education.
If a tool can generate a well-written essay or a clean solution in seconds, then the emphasis in the classroom has to change. The final product matters less than the process behind it.
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