Reviving 14th Century Educational Methods to Tackle AI Challenges in Universities

I recall the moment I realized that our current approach to managing student use of artificial intelligence was ineffective.

During an early meeting last fall at New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus, a philosophy professor expressed frustration. Despite efforts to engage students in discussions about how AI might undermine their learning, many continued to rely on AI-generated content for their papers. Even the most diligent students, who participated actively in class discussions, were using AI to bypass independent work outside the classroom.

This pattern echoed repeatedly in conversations with faculty from diverse disciplines by semester’s end. Students interested in the material increasingly avoided the intellectual effort of articulating their own ideas. Our initial AI strategy, which encouraged students to use tools like ChatGPT for practice testing, brainstorming, or feedback, failed to deter superficial and lazy applications.

Simply redesigning assignments to block easy AI use has proven futile. Assignments requiring critique of AI outputs can themselves be completed by AI. AI-driven tutoring systems intended to guide students can be circumvented by tools that provide direct answers. Moreover, AI-detection tools suffer from high false-positive rates and miss subtly edited AI-generated work, making them unreliable for faculty enforcement.

True learning involves altering long-term memory, the biological foundation of education. With much of the cognitive effort involved in writing now optional, institutions must adopt new methods that demand authentic work for meaningful learning. This necessitates a shift from take-home essays toward in-class blue book exams, oral assessments, mandatory office hours, and other real-time demonstrations of knowledge. This transition is already underway, as reflected by increased blue book sales reported last academic year.

Both students and educators express reservations about these adaptations. One professor described the renewed emphasis on in-person evaluation as akin to “teaching high school.” However, these approaches do not reduce academic rigor; instead, they represent a revival of a more personal and interactive model of higher education.

Historically, academic culture centered around dialogue, listening, and oral examination. Written assignments, such as structured essays and research papers, are comparatively recent developments. The earliest universities, established roughly a millennium ago in select European cities, operated in an era of scarce books and no movable type, relying primarily on oral instruction and evaluation.