AI Age: Professors Teach Students When to Struggle, Not Just Use Tools

• A writing professor shares evolving strategies for teaching in the age of generative AI, moving from early adoption to critical guidance.
• Initial experiments revealed AI's tendency to generate confident but often incorrect information, leading to student frustration.
• The professor observed "metacognitive laziness" and cognitive offloading in students over-relying on AI, hindering deep learning.
• New teaching methods include encouraging students to "Be Better Than a Robot" and requiring writing without AI to foster independent thought.
• The goal is to teach students discernment, helping them understand when AI is a strategic tool versus when it undermines their own critical thinking.