AI Literacy vs AI Dependency: Teaching Students to Think WITH, Not FOR
The Great AI Divide
The dawn of generative AI has sparked intense debates across academia. The University of Oxford recently announced free widespread access to ChatGPT for all students and staff. Meanwhile, other institutions ban AI usage entirely. This polarisation misses the nuanced approach education actually needs. Curricula unchanged despite the rise of generative AI miss the key shift this technology has produced in education.
VivaEdu's Philosophy: AI as Sparring Partner, Not Thought Provider
At VivaEdu, we encourage a balanced relationship with generative AI in education. Competency with AI platforms is an essential skill students must acquire during their educational years. But this competency should be strategic and effective - utilising these tools as a sparring partner in developing work, as an aid to mastery rather than a replacement for thinking. Through this, students can unlock perspectives they didn't have before and have concepts explained to them in ways they hadn't encountered originally.
Where VivaEdu sounds a warning is when students shift from using AI as a sparring partner to using it as a thought provider. As a recent Durham graduate shared with me when having to prepare for a presentation post-submission of their dissertation, the preparation revealed an uncomfortable truth: AI had written their dissertation fundamentally, resulting in them having to re-learn what was originally meant to be their own piece of research. This represents a fundamentally different relationship where collaboration with AI becomes capitulation. Students stop thinking alongside AI and start simply accepting its output, reducing students to AI output production trackers rather than users of these tools - they become the tools.
What Employers Actually Want
When employers expect universities to produce AI-literate graduates, they're not expecting vehicles for AI's charade of critical thinking. They want graduates who can harness AI while maintaining their own analytical capabilities, leading to more productive outcomes than otherwise. If university courses do not adjust their assessment methods, they are the direct causative factor in creating graduates with AI-dependencies rather than AI-literacy. As mathematics courses shifted with the advent of the calculator, so too do university courses need to shift with the advent of generative AI. Without doing so, a majority of university courses will produce graduates equivalent to unchanged mathematics courses graduate students who can only use calculators but cannot understand mathematical reasoning.
The Real Test: Can You Think Without It?
The question isn't whether students use AI - it's whether they can function without it. AI-literate graduates enhance their thinking with technology. AI-dependent graduates collapse when the technology isn't available. VivaEdu's oral assessments reveal this crucial difference before students enter the workforce unprepared.
The Neurodiversity Perspective: Leveling the Field vs Creating New Barriers
VivaEdu's neurodivergent founding team uniquely understands how AI can level educational playing fields. For students with processing differences, writing challenges, or executive function variations, AI can serve as a powerful equaliser - helping translate ideas into polished text, organising thoughts, and reducing barriers to demonstrating knowledge.
But we're also acutely aware of the risks. Cognitive offloading particularly affects those with reasoning and organisational difficulties, potentially creating new dependencies rather than building capabilities. The very students AI could help most may become most vulnerable to AI dependence.
This is why VivaEdu includes comprehensive accessibility accommodations - flexible timing, pause/resume options, typing alternatives, anxiety-reducing interfaces, and processing support - ensuring oral assessment remains equitable while preserving authentic engagement. Our platform proves that accessibility and authenticity aren't opposing forces, just as we imagine a future where artificial and human intelligence usher in the next age of humanity to resolve the great crises we face.
Building AI Literacy Through Ungameable Assessment
VivaEdu's philosophy is simple: authentic assessment reveals the difference between AI literacy and AI dependency. Students who can think with AI will excel in both written and oral formats. Students who rely on AI to think for them will struggle when required to demonstrate understanding in real-time.
Future-Proofing Education for an AI-Augmented World
The future belongs to graduates who can harness AI while maintaining independent critical thinking. VivaEdu prepares students for careers where they'll need both capabilities: the technical fluency to leverage AI tools and the cognitive strength to guide, evaluate, and build upon AI output.
This isn't about choosing between human intelligence and artificial intelligence - it's about ensuring human intelligence remains the driver in this powerful partnership.
Ready to see it in action? Try the free VivaEdu demo
Ben Arkus
CEO of VivaEdu