Connecting AI to the skills graduates will need

West-Smith compares the introduction of AI to the dawn of the printing press. “It didn’t just change education–it changed society,” she says. Similarly, AI is likely to shift educators away from valuing the regurgitation of facts, she says. “AI opens up shear knowledge to anyone who enters the right prompt,” West-Smith says.

That means institutions can spend less time focusing on the what and instead push students to think more critically about the why. “The value of higher education will not be diminished as a result of AI,” she says, adding, “The focus has to shift from delivering knowledge and isolated facts to how you apply and analyze those facts.” 

By focusing on synthesis, evaluation and analysis, universities can spend more time preparing students to be more critical thinkers and engaged citizens, qualities that benefit both the workforce and society overall.

Making the invisible visible

While some may view AI applications solely as means to detect plagiarism, West-Smith suggests that new tools can actually help educators better understand how students are approaching the writing process.

Typically, instructors have focused on checkpoints like rough drafts, revisions and peer consultation as well as feedback from educators to work with students as they make their way through versions of their written work. However, specific thinking and writing behaviors have been largely hidden. “We cannot be in students’ brains seeing that evolution,” she says.

WIth AI tools, instructors can now see how passages overlap with sources and where students have chosen to use direct quotations versus paraphrasing. “Now it’s actually possible to see how the writing process is taking shape,” West-Smith says. This enables educators to see students’ writing behaviors in ways they haven’t before

For example, the tool can show educators where students copied and pasted text as well as typing patterns. They illuminate a draft history and even can share total construction time. “You can see if they’re doing all their work at the last minute and making zero revisions.”

With those insights, instructors can better understand how individual students are approaching their work. “As an instructor, I can see trends and use that information to teach more effectively and even pair students with one another who have complementary insights. It’s incredibly exciting from a writing pedagogy perspective,” West-Smith says.

For students, AI tools allow them to make their academic integrity more visible, helping reduce the fear of false positives in plagiarism detection. “When you make your writing process visible as a student, you have a record of your work. You can show your decisions, and they stand up as an artifact for your integrity. That level of transparency helps both sides,” West-Smith says.