Students Are Telling Us They Feel Invisible. We Should Listen.
Every week, another story surfaces about what it feels like to learn in the shadow of AI.
The one that stuck with me most recently came from Maclean’s: a student wrote, “AI is ruining my education.”
Not because AI was doing their work, but because fear of it was changing their teachers.
Assignments got smaller. Feedback got shorter. AI detectors replaced real conversations.
Students began to feel like suspects in their own classrooms.
That isn’t innovation. It’s isolation.
What Students Are Really Saying
When students say AI is “ruining” their education, they’re not rejecting technology.
They’re describing the loss of something human: dialogue, mentorship, connection.
They want to be seen, to be challenged, and to know their work matters to someone who is paying attention.
The Risk of Teaching to the Detector
AI detection tools may seem like protection, but they send a message that cuts deep.
They tell students, we don’t trust you.
That message discourages curiosity, risk taking, and reflection. Those are core tenets higher education depends on.
Trust isn’t rebuilt through surveillance. It’s rebuilt through engagement.
Designing for Connection
At Hypothesis, we see what happens when classrooms are designed around connection.
Social annotation invites students into dialogue with a text, with their peers, and with their instructors.
When that happens, learning slows down in the best way possible.
Students start listening to one another. They find confidence in their own thinking.
In our case studies, faculty report 3–5x increases in engagement, higher completion rates, and stronger classroom community.
That isn’t a side effect. It’s the point.
Listening Is Leadership
If students feel invisible, that isn’t their failure to adapt. It’s our failure to design for them.
The institutions that thrive in the age of AI will be the ones that pair innovation with empathy. Students want to feel seen, not scanned.
AI isn’t ruining education. Disconnection is.
And we can fix that one conversation, one annotation, one visible act of learning at a time.
Further Reading
- AI is Ruining My Education – Maclean’s
- 5 Ways Hypothesis Improves Student Outcomes
- How Hypothesis Transformed Learning
Want to see how Hypothesis can help your students feel seen and engaged?
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