Indiana University Bloomington and Purdue University are requiring artificial intelligence courses to better prepare students for a technology-driven workforce.
Earlier this year, Indiana University opened its online course on generative artificial intelligence free to anyone.
The course, GenAI 101, teaches students how to use AI ethically and effectively. Eight modules and 16 lessons teach prompt engineering, data storytelling and fact-checking AI-generated content. The course also offers a conversational AI learning agent that provides real-time support.
That and a 201-level AI course will become a permanent part of the curriculum at IU’s Kelley School of Business.
Brian Williams, faculty chair of the Virtual Advanced Business Technologies Department at Kelley, who helped develop the course, said starting this year, every freshman at Kelley will be required to take GenAI 101 in the fall and 201 in the spring.
Williams said the goal is for Kelley students to become more AI literate and prepared for jobs where using AI is becoming common.
“201, we're getting a lot more business specific, so we're talking about things like how to use AI to predict human behavior in marketing, how to use AI for quantitative analysis and accounting or finance or operations,” he said. “How people are using AI day to day in business. Stuff like how to build AI agents, but also things like the risks of AI.”
Williams said 201 was an experimental course last spring, and he said it was well-received.
Purdue goes further
Last year, Purdue’s board of trustees approved an “AI working competency” graduation requirement for all undergraduates to help them prepare for the workforce.
Haley Oliver-Jischke, Purdue senior vice provost for academic and student success, said starting this year, students are required to take one course that meets certain criteria. Those include understanding how to ethically use AI and growing and protecting one’s own critical thinking skills while using AI.
“As we think about the impact of AI on learning, it can't just be a crutch,” she said. “It can't be replacement for foundational understanding and our own ability to think critically, to evaluate information. We know that AI can produce things that really maybe don't make sense. But if you don't have the ability to evaluate that or to assess that information as whether good, bad, useful, completely nonsensical, it's not a tool that's actually going to be useful or supportive to you.”
Earlier this year, Oliver-Jischke said faculty adjusted courses to meet the AI criteria. Currently, 22 courses meet the criteria. She said 331 plans of study were changed to accommodate the new requirement.
“I hope that they that they [students] learn to engage the technology in ways that is supportive to their education, or realizing some of its limitations in their education and how it could impact their future,” Oliver-Jischke said, “whether that's immediately going to graduate school and how you could use that tool to advance research, or to evaluate the information that's giving back to you that says this actually isn't the direction for your research, or this is perhaps derailing.”
Williams said it’s possible IU could create a university-wide AI graduation requirement but said it’s important to acknowledge how various fields may use AI differently.
“The way a music student would use AI is going to be different than the way business students use AI or chemistry,” he said. “And so, I think there's always a need for the faculty experts in those areas to be really thoughtful about how it's used in their areas, even on top of maybe anything that was broad for everyone.”
