Introduction by Eddie Maloney, Executive Director, CNDLS and Professor, English Department
Higher education’s response to artificial intelligence has been largely defensive—focused on detection and restriction. That response misses the point. AI is not the problem. It exposes problems we have long ignored: we identify learning gaps too late and intervene too little; students receive minimal, often delayed feedback; and too many graduate unable to build or critique a serious argument.
Used well, AI is not a threat to rigor—it is one of the best tools we have to restore it. The difference lies in how it is used. As a ghostwriter, AI replaces thinking. As a Socratic interlocutor—questioning assumptions, demanding precision, surfacing counterarguments, and exposing weak reasoning—it deepens thinking.
This talk presents 22 practical ways to use AI to strengthen student learning and closes with a clear institutional agenda: redesign teaching around what AI now makes possible—timely, detailed feedback, explicit instruction in argumentation, and assessments that require real-time judgment.
Professor of History & Author, University of Texas at Austin
Steven Mintz is a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author or editor of 17 books, including The Learning-Centered University. A leading authority on families, the life course, and higher education’s past, politics, and future, he has also been a prominent... Read More →
Eddie Maloney is the Executive Director of The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), a Professor of the practice of narrative literature and theory in the Department of English, and the Founding Director of a new Masters Degree program in Learning and Design... Read More →
Inspired by the Jesuits and the University’s mission to promote a liberal arts education, Georgetown Humanities Initiative is at the center of our university’s scholarly and public engagement.
Thank you to the GU Humanities Initiative for co-sponsoring Steven Mintz' lunch talk on Tuesday of TLISI... Read More →
