AI is now embedded in educating and studying. As educators, how will we assist college students profit from AI with out slipping into dependency, surface-level work, or moral misconduct? I’ve discovered a useful technique to make clear conversations with college students (and with myself) by pondering of AI as a teammate (or teammates) with clearly outlined roles: the Tasker, the Draftsmith, and the Facilitator.
Think about a gathering of a group of individuals: somebody handles logistics, somebody sketches concepts, somebody pushes dialogue. Framing AI this fashion has made it simpler to speak about college students remaining liable for how and to what functions they use AI. My method attracts on latest scholarship about AI reshaping how groups work (Dell’Acqua et al., 2025).
The AI Teammates
The Tasker
The Tasker offers with repetitive or procedural work resembling managing our calendars, formatting citations, or cleansing datasets. These duties usually are tedious however important and utilizing AI frees time that may be centered on deeper pondering. To make use of a Tasker, we will arrange a Robotic Course of Automation (RPA) with AI, use embedded AI instruments resembling Copilot in MS:Phrase or Claude in MS:Excel or Google sheets, or create what’s presently known as an LLM “Agent.” As Farri & Rosani (2025) describe of their HBR information to generative AI for managers, we will use AI to lighten the load on procedural chores, affording us the time and vitality to have interaction extra with deeper pondering and studying.
As a result of AI output could comprise errors, college students should be taught to determine the degrees of dangers they consider are acceptable for the given process earlier than turning to AI and should validate its output. The extent of validation required could rely upon the danger stage, wanted accuracy and high quality, and present information of the software’s metrics.
We method the Tasker in a different way than we do the Draftsmith and Facilitator: we will set our RPA or Agent as much as run and solely contain ourselves in its purposes till we’re certain it could possibly work independently and precisely, or we will set off the Tasker every time we’d like it. College students should be taught to put aside adequate validation time earlier than designing a Tasker.
The Draftsmith
The Draftsmith can spot passive voice in college students’ writing and clarify why it’s problematic, convert an overview right into a draft of a PowerPoint, and produce research instruments resembling a number of selection or essay questions, podcasts, and movies from their course notes. My engineering college students have prompted their Draftsmiths utilizing a immediate library I created particularly for them to assist them convert their design purchasers’ said wants into challenge necessities. Bussgang (2025) has identified how small steps like these can dramatically increase productiveness with out sacrificing studying.
Whereas AI could generate textual content or concepts, the ultimate product have to be the scholar’s personal (Duffy, 2025). I train my college students that, a lot to their dismay, they have to develop their very own writers’ voice earlier than utilizing AI and that this course of can take years and lots of writing efforts! Our author’s voice presents us to our bosses, colleagues, and purchasers provided that a lot of our communication at work is thru emails. Faculty is the very best time to take a position on this effort as a result of it’s uncommon to get alternatives later to take action.
From college students’ feedback, I consider they use AI within the Draftsmith position extra ceaselessly than the opposite two roles. Few notice the Draftsmith will increase cognitive load when they use it accurately and reduces their studying when they use it incorrectly!
It will increase the load as a result of they have to present the AI with important context for it to offer something apart from banal, widespread prose that flattens their very own voice (Purohit, 2025) or “creative” prose that’s meaningless. AI use decreases their studying once they use it to write down first and second drafts as a result of writing sharpens our pondering and embeds realized ideas into our long-term reminiscence.
The Facilitator
As a substitute of utilizing AI to generate content material (the Draftsmith), the Facilitator is a use of AI as a pondering accomplice (Solis, 2024 and HBSP’s ManageMentor course 2025). A pupil may ask AI to play satan’s advocate, recommend counterarguments, or pose probing questions when their paper’s argument wants strengthening. AI may assist simulate a stakeholder’s perspective with whom the scholar position performs to organize for a gathering or contemplate how their concepts may land with their pupil group friends. My college students have used AI within the Facilitator position to stress check their design concepts, assessment their analysis plans, and put together to offer shows. When college students use the Facilitator, they’re reflecting (Harbridge, 2025) and thereby deepening their studying.
To get the very best worth from AI as a Facilitator, the scholar should method it with the expectation that it’s going to take appreciable time. The Facilitator supplies significant interplay solely when the scholar offers it their full consideration, asks probing questions, supplies important context, and is affected person. They might want to iterate, restating their prompts or offering extra data, and to ask the LLM to be candid and significant. They might have to step away from the LLM, maybe strive a unique one or come again on one other day, when it goes off within the fallacious route.
We have now turn out to be too used to scanning an LLM’s output. Simply as I might not anticipate a pupil who got here to me for profession recommendation to start out scrolling on their cellphone whereas I’m speaking, I have to train them to offer their full consideration to the Facilitator.
What I’m suggesting right here is just not a listing of use instances. As a substitute, I’m offering college students with an method to utilizing AI the place they plan earlier than typing into the chat field, see its finest use as a Facilitator that companions with them in studying and improvement, and acknowledge that validation and studying output shall be time and cognitively intensive.
What This Means for Educating
I’ve discovered that after I train these roles to college students earlier than assigning homework, they make higher selections relating to when and find out how to use AI. Listed here are some ways I’ve tried which have netted constructive outcomes:
- design assignments that invite completely different roles. For instance, ask college students to start with AI as a Tasker (maybe organizing sources or cleansing a dataset), then shift to utilizing the Draftsmith to assist them discover passive voice or different syntax points in a paper, and eventually draw on the Facilitator to search out the holes of their arguments earlier than submitting a remaining paper. Deliberately stating the position every project requires and requiring them to state when they’re utilizing the Tasker, Draftsmith, or Facilitator solidifies their understanding that their method to AI differs by position.
- Be clear about the place AI helps and the place it doesn’t. AI may also help with construction, options, and ideation, nevertheless it can’t substitute revision, important pondering, or the event of 1’s personal voice. This have to be deliberately taught by together with questions requiring college students to mirror on what labored and the place the AI led them astray in any assignments permitting AI use.
- Encourage disclosure. I speak extensively about “Whole AI Transparency”, making certain college students that I’ll observe any use of AI in my communications with them and I anticipate the identical from them. Belief has damaged down as each college students and instructors consider the opposite is utilizing AI when they’re not and failing to acknowledge when they’re. Proudly owning as much as my very own use and being clear on why I used AI for that process encourages college students to do the identical.
Closing Ideas
We have to steer college students away from extremes of both refusing to make use of AI in any respect or letting it rob them of studying. By distinguishing the roles of Tasker, Draftsmith, and Facilitator, we make clear our expectations of college students. Extra importantly, we assist them turn out to be extra deliberate of their method, getting ready them to be AI-fluent.
Illysa Izenberg is an Affiliate Educating Professor for the Middle for Management Training in the Whiting Faculty of Engineering at The Johns Hopkins College. She has been educating administration and enterprise ethics to graduate and undergraduate college students by way of Face-to-Face, on-line, and blended programs since 2006. Izenberg earned her MBA from the Harvard Graduate Faculty of Enterprise and is the winner of each the Alumni and Pond Excellence in Educating Awards (2016 and 2020 respectively).
References
Bussgang, J. (2025, Might 20). 3 small steps to 10x your productiveness with AI this week. The Experimentation Machine. https://experimentationmachine.com/p/10x-this-week
Duffy, A. (2025, April 11). Your CEO simply stated ‘Use AI or else.’ Right here’s what to do subsequent. Each. https://every.to/p/your-ceo-just-said-use-ai-or-else-here-s-what-to-do-next
Farri, E., & Rosani, G. (2025). HBR information to generative AI for managers. Harvard Enterprise Evaluation Press.
Gross, A. (2025). AI Crash Course [Online course]. SectionAI. https://www.sectionschool.com/courses/ai-crash-course-workshop
Harbridge, R. (2025). AI for Workforce Leaders [Online course]. SectionAI.
Harvard Enterprise Publishing. (2025). Assist your group harness generative AI (Lesson 1). In Main with generative AI [Online course]. Harvard ManageMentor.
Purohit, R. (Host). (2025, June 18). The person contained in the minds of the folks constructing AGI [Audio podcast episode]. In AI & I. Each.
Solis, B. (2024, November). Prepare your mind to work creatively with Gen AI. Harvard Enterprise Faculty Publishing.
