From Control to Creativity
Rethinking Teaching and Assessment Tools in the Age of AI
Shifting from control to creativity is the next step in Lipscomb’s AI journey
At its best, higher education is about more than information transfer. The higher education experience is one where minds are shaped, curiosity is sparked, and human potential is cultivated. With the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence, we as educators must rethink not only what we teach but how and with what tools.
This consideration of tools is our latest step in Lipscomb’s journey with AI. As shared in earlier articles in this series, from building a brave culture of hospitality to shaping ethical policy, we’ve focused on people before platforms and formation before fear. So, at this stage in our journey, we’re asking a new kind of question: What tools are worth investing in? And, just as importantly, what tools should we let go?
What We’re Learning About Tools
The landscape is shifting quickly. According to the World Economic Forum (2025), 60% of employers are expecting growing digital access and 86% of employers expect AI and information-processing technologies to transform their businesses by 2030. For educators, this means new demands on technological literacy and creativity. It also means greater pressure to select tools that serve students’ growth rather than just protect institutional interests.
Historically, many digital tools in education have centered on control: plagiarism detection, passive learning platforms, rigid assessment systems. But in the age of generative AI, we’re beginning to see the limits of that surveillance mindset. Tools designed to “catch” students are often outpaced by the very technologies they aim to police. We’ve seen this clearly at Lipscomb and I would guess that others in higher education are seeing it as well.
As Kassorla (2025) explains in her Substack article on inverted Bloom’s Taxonomy, educators need to rethink our priorities when we think about teaching and learning. Rather than beginning with basic recall and climbing upward, perhaps we flip the model and start with higher-order skills like creativity, design, and problem-solving. We need tools that help students imagine, iterate, and co-create meaning with faculty rather than just performing knowledge reproduction. This is a key shift in thinking about teaching, learning, and assessment.
Hospitality, Play, and Partnership
We’ve begun this transition at Lipscomb through deep collaboration between our Center for Teaching and Learning and Information Technology. The CTL has hosted faculty sessions where participants explore a range of AI and productivity tools, not just through instruction, but through play. Faculty test tools, give feedback, and share what they feel they truly need in their teaching contexts. Our CIO is deeply engaged with our AI Teaching Fellow and CTL staff as they share the information gleaned from these conversations, along with the feedback we get from our AI Standing Committee and Super User Task Force. This is essential so that the CIO is aware of the tools that are most exciting and useful for the faculty as he interacts with vendors. Now, as he evaluates vendor options, he knows what faculty are looking for and what they may be willing to get rid of.
This process reflects our core value of Embrace Collaboration, which calls us to innovate together, not in isolation. It also mirrors the framework shared in our “Fear to Flourishing” roadmap, which challenges us to move from restrictive to transformative thinking (Gibson, Morrow, & Wilson, 2025).
Instead of asking, “How do we stop students from using AI?” we’re asking, “How do we teach students to use AI well?” That shift from fear to formation is at the heart of our investment strategy as we consider tools.
Letting Go to Grow
Of course, this process comes with tradeoffs. As we look to invest in more adaptive, generative tools, we also face the difficult task of letting go of other tools. This is a critical time for us to assess the technology tools that we’ve been using and ask ourselves if they are still the right fit. Some of our older tools, especially those rooted in surveillance models, no longer align with our vision for teaching and learning. We have to evaluate if tools we currently use are too expensive if we want to invest in expanding our range, if they’re underutilized, or simply no longer fit the pedagogical direction we’re heading.
Releasing these tools is both a budgetary and a philosophical decision. It signals a move toward a classroom culture that prioritizes exploration over enforcement and learning over logistics. But, as we all know, letting go of our old favorites can be difficult. I’ve been working with the Center for Teaching and Learning to plan both face to face and asynchronous online opportunities for faculty to spend time this summer getting to know new tools and working individually with the CTL to rethink assessments that may have centered around use of the tools that we are moving away from.
What’s Next
As we continue identifying the tools that support our mission, we’re grounding our decisions in both feedback and formation. We believe that:
The best tools are not the most powerful, but the most purposeful. If a tool does a lot, but doesn’t meet our needs, it’s not the best for us.
Faculty need space to experiment before they can adopt with confidence. Bringing in vendors to demo tools with faculty and getting their feedback has been invaluable. And building in time for training and experimenting together is key.
Creativity must be built into the foundation, not just an afterthought. As we’re shifting our mindset about teaching and learning based on technological advances, we need to be thinking about assessment as well. Asking ourselves as faculty, “How do I know what my students know?” can help us rethink assessment in this new world.
This is not mainly a tech transition, but a mindset shift. And we’re committed to walking this part of the journey together as we all learn and reimagine what teaching, learning, and assessment look like in the unmade future.
References
Gibson S., Morrow, L. & Wilson, A. (2025) “From Fear to Flourishing: Guiding Institutions Through AI Transformation,” Innovative Teaching & Learning Conference, Knoxville, Tennessee.
Kassorla, M. (2024). Inverted Bloom’s for the Age of AI. Substack.
World Economic Forum. (2025). The future of jobs report 2025. https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/