Ten years ago, I submitted my first prediction to the Nieman Lab, in which I made the provocation that product management would be the new model of journalism. I am encouraged by prosperity news product community which has emerged over the last decade. However, journalism education, with a few exceptions, has not responded comprehensively to support this transition to digital products. But I predict that journalism education will experience a new era of innovation due to the continued adoption and experimentation of artificial intelligence applications. While many lament the potential for AI to replace both journalists and educators, I believe there are approaches to AI that can lead to better outcomes for both teachers and educators. the learners.
Program Changes
Adding the latest technologies to the curriculum takes motivation, commitment and time. Many recognize the shortcomings of traditional journalism degree programs, but feel overwhelmed or lack the means to embrace innovation. AI can reduce the effort needed to evaluate, learn and apply new technologies and emerging concepts, whether adding modules to an existing course, developing new courses based on languages or applications of current programming, or to undertake a large-scale overhaul of programs. Not only can it provide custom code samples for programming exercises or step-by-step descriptions of new software features, but it can also facilitate program and course development, contextualize explanations of difficult concepts, and organize them into modules courses and presentations. And it can suggest recommendations for study plans and program changes that could result in programs that are more adaptable and better suited to students’ career outcomes (you are, however, on your own to get changes approved by your program committees) .
Helping students in their own learning process, especially for technology training, requires more time and heavy doses of patience. AI can support students in their own learning process. For example, in my mobile app development course, I used ChatGPT to learn and update examples using the latest version of the Swift programming language. Then I added lessons encouraging students to use AI to develop their own projects. The quality of the code created, as well as the explanations provided by the AI platform, significantly reduced students’ apprehension and stress. Students were able to better realize their project visions, and I had support from an AI teaching assistant who could help students resolve coding issues and errors. Students also demonstrated judgment in post-exercise reflections by discussing their approaches to prompting and the quality of the work they created with the help of the AI.
Inspire confidence
In addition to learning new technologies, AI can increase students’ confidence in traditional skills. In my graduate Digital Issues course, students are assigned weekly readings and posts on digital media theory, cyberculture research, data journalism, social media, immersive media, and legal and political issues. Towards the end of the semester, I discovered the Google product CarnetLMI downloaded my last nine years of Nieman Lab predictions and got it generate a podcast with two realistic and human-sounding “hosts” who talk about my articles. I was blown away by what he produced and beyond impressed with the way he engaged with my work. I couldn’t wait to give students the chance to try it. I asked them to upload links to each of their articles and generate their own AI podcasts. Student reflections indicated that hearing the “facilitators” engage with their writing and ideas gave them more confidence in what they had created. They were also able to critique what was working and what wasn’t working well in the AI-generated conversations.
Increase creativity
One of the exercises in my undergraduate digital media innovation capstone course was to guide students through a lean canvas exercise. The Lean Canvas is a tool that explores an innovative concept or idea, providing a format for identifying the problem statement, customer segments, value proposition, distribution channels and financial considerations. After completing the exercise, I presented to them Zigzaga web-based AI tool that creates a lightweight canvas based on a single prompt. I asked students to compare the canvas created by the AI to what they had created. Their feedback indicated that the AI version was more comprehensive and gave them more creative ways to examine the problem they were solving. They also indicated limitations, including the often non-specific nature and impersonal tone of AI-generated results. In addition to the canvas, ZigZag also provided sample empathy interview questions, pitch suggestions, potential startup names, and even sample code for a simple landing page (which happens to be our project final). When used effectively, students have found that this tool can help validate a concept and recommend new directions and ideas, all part of the innovation process.
Some may wonder if we will actually need teachers in the future, with AI offering such high-quality teaching, constant availability and seemingly unlimited patience. But with the rapid pace of change and the volume of potential topics and concepts to learn, the role of the educator will evolve to become more that of a curator and coach, guiding students toward the topics and approaches that will be most useful to them in the future and inspire confidence in their ability to learn and apply it to the problems they wish to solve. The educator will also model and encourage the critical thinking and ethical considerations necessary to judge the quality of AI outcomes and how best to integrate it with the human element.
In these examples, which are just a few of the ways AI can be integrated into journalism programs, AI tools pushed students out of their comfort zones to achieve project goals, gain confidence in their work, validate their ideas and criticize their results. And it has given them the opportunity to do it on their own, an autonomy that should serve them well in their career journey in which lifelong learning will be necessary. It will be up to teachers to guide students toward the most effective ways to use AI to expand their capabilities, not replace them. We are only at the beginning of understanding the application of AI in educational environments. Tools will improve, results will become more realistic, and the changing nature of human accent will need to be continually reassessed and appreciated. But I, for one, applaud our AI overlords for inspiring a new era of innovation in journalism education.
Cindy Royal is a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University.
