At the beginning of every semester, I ask my students why they signed up for my course. I did the same a week ago as our semester got underway. My class is aimed at understanding health challenges faced by refugees and those who are forcibly displaced due to conflict and other factors. We focus on developing engineering solutions to address the health challenges faced by these communities.

As a policy, I do not allow students to use computers or any electronic devices in the class – they have to write on paper, and I do my best to use the blackboard (or whiteboard) instead of PowerPoint presentations. Lately, I have also added weekly in-class writing assignments (on paper), with the hope that I will get to learn directly from students and their perspectives, instead of getting summaries generated by LLMs. My students are smart, well-informed, thoughtful and knowledgeable – I am far more interested in what they have to say and share than what generative AI creates.

The first time I offered the class, a........

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