Navigating through the Noise of the AI era relying on Problem Based Learning

Artificial Intelligence is penetrating more and more sectors of the contemporary economy and public life. The rate of adoption and investment creates an “aura of inevitability” and sidelines anyone who questions AI’s rapid development. Artificial intelligence is also reshaping the landscape of higher education. In this paper Geert Biesta’s model of (higher) education is used as an analytical lens to explore the defining features of the GenAI technology which present opportunities and threats to teaching and learning in EU studies and in the university environment more generally. According to the Dutch educational philosopher Geert Biesta, every educational process - intentionally or not - contributes to the qualification, socialisation and subjectification of the participating students. In an ever more AI-saturated educational landscape, how are these three formation processes affected? The paper takes stock of how AI tools (such as generative text models, intelligent tutoring systems, and adaptive learning platforms) impact scholarly integrity and academic honesty, deep (associative) learning, and the acquisition of academic skills such as writing, debating and argument-building/persuading. Subsequently, the paper charts out how Problem Based Learning (PBL) and its foundational principes of collaborative, contextual, constructivist and self-directed learning (may) offer an antidote to the main risks that AI introduces.