Ohio State says every student will become fluent in AI with new program

The Hill

17 hours ago

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — While other schools have been cracking down on students using artificial intelligence, the Ohio State University says all of its students will be using it starting this fall.
'Through AI Fluency, Ohio State students will be 'bilingual' — fluent in both their major field of study and the application of AI in that area,' Ravi V. Bellamkonda, executive vice president and provost, said.
Ohio State's AI Fluency Initiative will embed AI education throughout the undergraduate curriculum. The program will prioritize the incoming freshman class and onward, in order to make every Ohio State graduate 'fluent in AI and how it can be responsibly applied to advance their field.'
The change comes as students are increasingly using ChatGPT and other resources to complete their schoolwork. The Pew Research Center found 26% of teenagers used ChatGPT for schoolwork in 2024, twice as many as in 2023.
With AI quickly becoming mainstream, some professors, like Steven Brown, an associate professor of philosophy at Ohio State, who specializes in ethics, have already begun integrating AI into their courses.
'…A student walked up to me after turning in the first batch of AI-assisted papers and thanked me for such a fun assignment. And then when I graded them and found a lot of really creative ideas,' Brown said during a recent interview with Ohio State. 'My favorite one is still a paper on karma and the practice of returning shopping carts.'
OSU said it will offer new general education courses and work with colleges to integrate AI fluency into coursework and help expand existing AI-focused course offerings. Each of Ohio's 14 public universities has incorporated AI in some way, but OSU is the first to officially incorporate AI fluency into every major.
Students will be required to take an AI skills seminar, OSU said in a press release.
'Artificial intelligence is transforming the way we live, work, teach and learn. In the not-so-distant future, every job, in every industry, is going to be impacted in some way by AI,' Ohio State President Ted Carter said.
Brown is one of several instructors who have already implemented AI into their courses, and some faculty found students were hesitant about AI at times. Subbu Kumarappan, an associate professor of economics and business, said that while students enjoyed AI projects, some told him they did not always feel like the work was really theirs.
'High-performing students tend to use AI to take their work even further, while those struggling may fall behind if they don't fully engage,' Kumarappan said during a recent Q&A with the university. 'That's why I set clear expectations on how AI can or can't be used in every assignment and emphasize teamwork and collaboration — skills that remain essential.'
Students will not be allowed to use generative AI to pass off assignments as their own. Faculty will receive guidance on how to maintain academic integrity while using AI as a tool from university offices that have been tasked with facilitating generative AI education programs.
For instance, OSU said education majors could be asked to use AI to create a lesson plan, which they then will evaluate and revise. The sample assignment would require students to submit their lesson plan along with their initial AI prompt and a reflection on what they changed and how effective the generative AI was.
Brown said AI is here to stay, so banning it is 'shortsighted.' He encouraged students to have discussions about ethics and philosophy with AI chatbots, asked them to write papers using AI however they'd like, and used AI to help create dialogues between two sides of a controversial topic to demonstrate educated arguments on both sides.
'It would be a disaster for our students to have no idea how to effectively use one of the most powerful tools that humanity has ever created,' Brown said. 'AI is such a powerful tool for self-education, that we must rapidly adapt our pedagogy or be left in the dust.'