Harvard dean plans 'barbell' AI policy for college courses

Harvard College's dean is preparing formal advisory guidelines on classroom AI use by year-end, and has already telegraphed where they will land: more supervised exams, and take-home work retired as trustworthy graded assessment. In his start-of-year message to students, Danoff Dean David J. Deming laid out what he called a barbell strategy.

"I favor a 'barbell' approach to AI in the classroom: actively encouraging AI usage where it can deepen learning, and at the same time, AI-proofing assessments that are designed to demonstrate mastery," Deming wrote. His concrete example on the AI-proofing side was old-school: "We may want to give more seated 'blue book' final exams: three-hours, with pen-and-paper."

The judgment behind the shift is blunt. "Take-home exams and problem sets are no longer a sustainable way to assess mastery," Deming wrote, "and when coupled with unenforceable AI bans they create a difficult dilemma for students who don't want to cheat but also fear falling behind to their classmates." For writing-intensive and project-based courses, he floated asking students to "embody" their expertise through a presentation or oral defense rather than a graded paper. The letter had been circulating among a couple of the AI-in-education researchers we track within days of going up.

The timeline is explicit. "My goal is to produce a set of advisory guidelines on AI usage in Harvard College courses by the end of the academic year," Deming wrote. Alongside the AI section, he confirmed the restoration of the First-Year Dean's Office, with Tom Dingman, who served as Dean of Freshmen for 13 years until his 2018 retirement, returning in an interim role while a national search runs for a permanent successor.