Elena Mangione-Lora, a senior teaching professor of Spanish language and culture, has embraced the use of artificial intelligence in her language courses to enhance linguistic opportunities. While many professors remain wary of AI, concerned about its potential to facilitate cheating and undermine academic integrity, Mangione-Lora sees it as a valuable tool to enrich student learning and engagement.
“The best way to learn communicative language is through authentic input and that is where AI comes in,” Mangione-Lora said.
Communicative language is a teaching method centered around the interactive approach to trial and error in the context of classroom discourse within the study of a language. It is met with the expectation that upper-level courses will be entirely taught and run in Spanish.
Using this teaching method, Mangione-Lora highlighted that the language department at Notre Dame strives to stimulate language acquisition through implementing an immersive exploration of language.
“Through the communicative method, we aim to only speak Spanish in the classroom,” Mangione-Lora said.
When asked to explain more on the application of AI in the classroom, Mangione-Lora gave insight on the vision of the department. Ultimately, the tool will allow professors to input documents or URLs that are meaningful to the course and then the technological chat-bot would produce conversational stimulants and additional feedback that mirror human dialogue for students.
The Department of Romance Languages and Literature is one of the first to implement these uses of AI in the classroom.
“Notre Dame in a lot of ways is at the forefront, and we are doing a good job of navigating that landscape,” Mangione-Lora said.
As the faculty begin to embrace the positive attributes associated with the application of AI in the classroom, Mangione-Lora noted that this tool is only helpful when accompanied by proper research on effective study methods.
Drawing on effective teaching strategies from “Make It Stick” by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, she emphasized that AI is not merely useful as a translator or dictionary, but rather as a tool for enhancing classroom learning by fostering engaging, meaningful conversations that help students apply concepts more effectively.
AI is often brought up in a fearful context regarding the opportunity for students to engage in cheating, however, while discussing the tool in relation to unethical uses, Mangione-Lora offered a reassuring approach.
“There is nothing that can replace human contact, but [artificial intelligence] is here to stay, and students need to learn to use it responsibly,” Mangione-Lora said.
Mangione-Lora also highlighted the need for both teachers and students to be aware of the technical and applicable limitations of AI.
“We owe it to ourselves, to our students, to the changing landscape to make it unappealing to cheat,” Mangione-Lora said.
Returning ultimately to the intrinsic motivation of Notre Dame students, Professor Mangione-Lora expressed gratitude for the hardworking students that do not wish to rely on AI in order to improve their skills in language acquisition.
“I don’t think students want to cheat themselves, they want to learn and they want to be engaged,” Mangione-Lora said. “The eventual point of studying a language is to have conversation and be cultured in the aspects of other cultures.”
