The University of Chicago's Social Sciences Core will generally prohibit classroom technology and ban AI-assisted writing for students and instructors during the coming academic year, according to a memo described in AI Weekly Issue #527. The memo also says AI-assisted grading has no place in the Core unless faculty carefully validate it against human grading.
Ted Underwood, one of the experts who shared the story, said he uses AI frequently while still teaching introductory courses without devices. His test is whether a policy stays flexible enough to allow assignments that explicitly invite AI.
Alpha School is expanding toward roughly 50 US campuses, including 27 new locations, the report says. Students spend about two hours each morning on adaptive academic software, followed by workshops in subjects such as coding, entrepreneurship and public speaking. Researchers told Scientific American that Alpha has not released enough evidence to separate the software's effect from student selection and the rest of the school design.
The report presents the two approaches as competing models. UChicago is protecting the process by which students show their own thinking. Alpha is organizing the school around software and measuring whether students move through academic material faster.
MIT's August 13 report falls outside the newsletter's seven-day window, the source says