Ohio State announces every student will use AI in class

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Starting this fall, every Ohio State student will be asked to use artificial intelligence.

"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 OSU said from 2029 onward, every Ohio State graduate will be fluent in the application of AI in 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 Associate Professor of Philosophy Steven Brown, 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. "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.

Ohio State said it will offer new general education courses and help faculty adapt existing courses to incorporate AI. The university will now require students to take an AI skills seminar, and it will incorporate workshops into existing framework like the First Year Seminar program. The seminars are optional one-credit courses tailored to first-year students in specialized subjects like Fantasy Worldbuilding in Television, Know Your Recreational Drugs and soon, AI.

"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.

Ohio State said this does not mean students will be able to use generative AI to pass off assignments as their own. OSU is tasking at least six university offices with facilitating the generative AI education programs. These offices will issue guidance to faculty on how to maintain academic integrity while using AI as a tool.

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.

OSU also recognized that faculty and instructors may need support. The university's Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning is tasked with expanding resources to help faculty integrate AI, including a new grant program for instructors.

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. Associate Professor of economics and business Subbu Kumarappan said students enjoyed AI projects, but 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. "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."

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."