I remember stretching my phone line across the hallway whenever I needed to plug my computer into the internet in 1994. I can’t even begin to explain all the ways technology has changed my life over the past 30 years, but if you’re close to my age, you get it. I admit, I wasn’t paying enough attention to AI in 2024-2025. Is it a robot? Is it like a better version of Google? Oh, so you’re telling me it can do math and write research papers? Wow, that’s going to make it hard for professors to detect cheating…. I had no idea.
At the end of March, a parent in our Arizona State University Facebook Group posted the following:
Her post generated a lot of comments, from ways to approach the professor to creating work logs for all writing, and a general dissatisfaction with the use of AI.
“Scary times we are living in.”
“The sad truth is people are having to dumb down their writing to not be accused in college.”
“My daughter (w)ent through the same thing. She has 51 credits and all A’s besides a single B because of accused ai for the final paper.”
“If this is how college is, my daughter won’t continue on that path…why are we dumbing down educated children for college? This is quite literally insane.”
What to Expect: Dual Enrollment & AI
Over the past year, colleges have started moving quickly to limit how students use AI. Tools like ChatGPT started the concern, but we are WAY beyond ChatGPT, and colleges are changing how students are tested and evaluated.
Oral Exams
The Boston Globe reported last week that colleges are bringing back oral exams. Apparently students who have been turning in perfect papers were unable to explain their work. Interest in oral assessments intensified after the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, building on earlier COVID-19 pandemic shifts to address online cheating. Educators now implement these methods to combat skill loss and ensure cognitive capacity. Cornell University requires 20-minute Socratic-style defenses for classes of 70 students, Pennsylvania pairs oral exams with written papers, and NYU unveiled AI-powered oral assessments, calling it “fighting fire with fire.” This will trickle down quickly, and you should expect to see oral exams being used in dual enrollment as soon as this fall.
Handwriting
Like a time machine, colleges are starting to return to handwritten essays and tests. While this removes access to AI during a supervised exam, we may see creative versions of this for online learners. This will happen quickly for in-person dual enrollment, and we should eventually expect to see a variation of this in the coming years for online learners.
Show Your Work
Some professors are already asking for writing logs, revision history (Google Docs tracking), notes, outlines, and drafts. While AI can generate a final paper, it can’t easily replicate the natural thinking process or drafts. This requirement would dramatically alter the typical rubric, which could include points associated with the writing process, not just final product. Expect to see this in dual enrollment immediately, both in person and online.
AI Tools
AI tools are currently very poor. Companies that were initially leaders in the field of plagiarism detection (Turnitin) generates a lot of false positives. Many schools no longer trust these tools on their own, and require a professor to verify flags.
For Your Consideration as a Homeschool Parent
For your consideration, there is a growing divide in how colleges are choosing to respond to AI, and I invite you to think about it as a homeschool parent. In some classrooms, using tools like ChatGPT is treated as academic misconduct, something to detect, restrict, and penalize. In others, it is being introduced as a skill, something students are expected to learn, refine, and use responsibly in their future careers. These two approaches are not small differences in policy, they reflect fundamentally different beliefs about what education is supposed to do.
Students must understand how to use AI, not how to avoid AI. We did not have a TV in our home until my four sons were ages 6–16, but that was not because I rejected exposure to technology. (That is a different conversation for a different day!) What mattered then, and what still matters now, is not whether technology exists, but whether a student knows how to use it well.
Imagine in 2026 an employee who cannot manage an email account, upload a file, collaborate on a shared document, set up a Zoom meeting, or add an event to an online calendar. Those are no longer optional skills. They are basic expectations in almost every workplace.
AI is quickly moving into that same category. Knowing how to prompt, evaluate, refine, and apply AI output is becoming a foundational skill, not an advanced one. A student who is trained only to avoid AI may graduate with strong traditional habits but lack the ability to function efficiently in a modern environment. On the other hand, a student who understands how to use AI responsibly can work faster, think more broadly, and solve problems with better tools at their disposal. The difference is not about cutting corners. It is about learning how to work in the world as it actually exists.
This is especially true in technical fields, where employers are already expecting new hires to be comfortable using AI in their daily work. In many computer science and software roles, tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT are used to write, debug, and improve code more efficiently. Entry-level employees are no longer judged only on what they can build from scratch, but also on how effectively they can leverage these tools to solve problems quickly and accurately. A graduate who has never been taught how to use AI in coding is at a clear disadvantage compared to peers who have already integrated it into their workflow.
The real question is not whether students will use AI. They will. The question is whether they will use it poorly and secretly, or skillfully and transparently. Education has always adapted to new tools, from calculators to computers to the internet. Each time, there were concerns about dependence, but over time those tools became part of what it means to be educated.
