Banaras Hindu University (BHU), the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) and Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj University (CSJMU) will jointly organise a national workshop on artificial intelligence in higher education on October 24 at IIT Kanpur.
The workshop, titled AI in Higher Education, is being organised by IIT Kanpur’s Centre for Educational Research and Teaching Excellence (CERTEX). It will bring together faculty members, researchers and academic leaders to discuss the use of AI in teaching, tutoring, learning and assessment.
The programme will be held at the L17 Lecture Hall Complex at IIT Kanpur. According to the institute’s published schedule, the sessions will cover classroom applications of AI, the redesign of assignments and examinations, ethical concerns and the role of human educators as AI tools become more widely used in universities.
What will the workshop discuss?
The workshop will focus on how universities can incorporate AI into academic practices without compromising educational standards or the role of teachers.
The morning sessions will examine AI-assisted classroom teaching and human mentorship. Speakers include Prof. Vimal Singh of CSJMU, who will discuss human mentorship in the age of AI, and Prof. Manjari Gupta of BHU, whose session will focus on AI augmentation in classroom teaching.
The programme will also include a discussion on experiences of using AI in classrooms, followed by an open session on how AI is changing teaching practices.
The afternoon programme will focus on assessment. Sessions will examine the use of AI for assignments and the challenges of setting coding assignments when students have access to generative AI tools. A presentation by CERTEX will address the use of AI in assessment design.
The final session will focus on ethics in AI, followed by a panel discussion on AI in higher education.
Why are universities rethinking assessment?
The growing availability of generative AI tools has raised questions about how universities can assess students’ understanding when assignments, essays and code can be produced with AI assistance.
Traditional take-home assignments may not always show how much a student understands independently. Institutions are therefore examining whether assessments should place greater emphasis on oral examinations, supervised work, practical tasks and the reasoning behind a student’s answers.
The workshop’s sessions on assignments and coding assessments are intended to address these challenges. The agenda also includes discussions on responsible AI use, academic integrity, fairness and the need for human oversight.
These questions are particularly relevant for universities as they decide when AI tools can support learning and when their use may undermine the purpose of an assessment.
What role will teachers play in AI-enabled education?
The workshop will examine how AI can assist educators without replacing their role in teaching and mentoring.
AI tools can help prepare learning materials, support tutoring and provide students with additional explanations. However, teachers remain responsible for assessing the quality of information, understanding students’ needs, providing feedback and guiding academic development.
The session on human mentorship, along with the discussions on classroom transformation and ethics, will examine how these responsibilities may change as AI becomes more common in higher education.
IIT Kanpur’s workshop description identifies the development of a practical framework for AI-enabled education as one of its aims. The proposed approach is intended to help institutions identify useful applications while retaining academic quality and human oversight.
Who is organising the workshop?
The workshop is being coordinated by CERTEX at IIT Kanpur in collaboration with BHU and CSJMU. Its organising team includes faculty members from the three institutions.
The programme will feature academic leaders and faculty members from engineering, computer science, education, physics, chemistry and other disciplines. IIT Kanpur director Prof. Manindra Agrawal, BHU vice-chancellor Prof. Ajit Chaturvedi and CSJMU vice-chancellor Prof. Vinay Pathak are listed for the inaugural session.
The event is scheduled as a full-day, in-person programme, with sessions running from the morning through the evening.
