Have to Shake It Up: STEM Education Feeling the Heat from Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

General-purpose AI already correctly solves most traditional assessment problems in first-year STEM education, and it continues to become more proficient with every release. This quiet superheating of familiar practices by increasing AI capabilities will yield a messy eruption unless instructors introduce deliberate ‘nucleation sites’ and shake up the curriculum. We argue that results of science education research are now more relevant than ever since they provide insights and strategies on how to optimize human learning. Finally, we emphasize the importance of community and wellbeing – through peer instruction, studios, and brief, structured oral checks with whiteboarding – to counter loneliness and fatalism. As most of these instructional methods involve open-ended tasks, which tend to be more resource-intensive in grading and feedback than traditional, solution-oriented closed-form answer practices, AI can play an important role in assisting and supporting human educators. Thus, we illustrate how ETH Zurich’s Ethel system operationalizes these approaches through a course-grounded chatbot, formative feedback on handwritten work, on-demand practice, and grading assistance, while keeping learning human.