Q&A: Leveraging artificial intelligence to propel engineering education

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — To help engineering students learn with artificial intelligence (AI) without sacrificing critical thinking, academic integrity or authentic learning, a Penn State faculty member is implementing an AI-enabled adaptive tutoring platform. Suman Saha, associate teaching professor of computer science and engineering at Penn State, was awarded a two-year, $199,009 U.S. National Science Foundation Research Initiation in Engineering Formation grant to support this work.

The tutoring platform, called ALAASKA (Adaptive Learning for All through AI-Powered Student Knowledge Assessment), was developed previously by Saha and his collaborators.

In this Q&A, Saha discussed challenges and opportunities for the future of engineering education, the ALAASKA platform and the comparative study he and his collaborators are conducting to identify student learning difficulties and how AI could help.

Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities for engineering education with regard to generative AI?

Saha: The biggest challenge is not simply that generative AI can answer questions, but that it can make it easier for students to bypass the reasoning that engineering education is meant to develop. Engineers must learn to examine assumptions, compare alternatives, learn from mistakes and exercise professional judgment. If students rely on AI mainly for polished final answers, they may complete an assignment without developing those habits.