Key points:

• A number of leading education and technology leaders are formulating recommendations around teaching with AI
• These efforts can help prepare students to work with and within the world of AI and its rapid evolution
• See related article: The importance of teaching generative AI
• Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

Code.org, ETS, ISTE, Khan Academy, and World Economic Forum have formed TeachAI, bringing together education, nonprofit, and technology partners to assist governments and education authorities with integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into primary and secondary curricula worldwide while protecting student safety, respecting privacy rights, and addressing issues of bias and misinformation.

AI’s rapid pace of development in recent months offers exciting applications for the classroom, but the unprecedented technology also demands deliberation as the implications are vast. TeachAI will bring critical voices across education, policy, and technology to develop a practical framework for teaching with AI and teaching about AI.

The framework will provide guidance to governments and educational leaders on how to adapt policy, standards, curriculum, pedagogy, tools, and assessments to meet the needs of an increasingly AI-driven world.

These partners will help shape three key outputs of TeachAI:

1. Policy and pedagogical recommendations for teaching with AI
TeachAI will recommend best practices for policymakers, education leaders, teachers, and companies on safely incorporating AI in primary and secondary education curriculum standards, courses, tools, assessments, and professional learning.

2. A global framework for computer science, including AI
Since 2016, the K-12 CS Framework has guided education systems in the U.S. and other countries in implementing computer science (CS) curricula. TeachAI will create recommendations for a global audience, reflecting the need for CS instruction to teach about AI and using AI. This work will guide standards, curriculum, professional learning, assessments, and policy.

3. Public engagement opportunities for educators and administrators 
In addition to producing reports and guidelines, TeachAI will engage the broader education community through webinars, blog posts, emails, and social media to collect input and share learnings.

This new effort will convene technology leaders such as Amazon, Cisco, Microsoft, and OpenAI; education organizations such as AASA (The School Superintendents Association), College Board, Council of Chief State School Officers, National Association of State Boards of Education, National School Boards Association, leading university researchers, and equity-focused groups such as Black in AI and National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT); as well as education ministries and associations from Brazil, Germany, Kenya, Malaysia, South Korea, UAE, UK, and other countries from six continents. These organizations reach millions of teachers and hundreds of millions of students worldwide. Read the complete list of participants at TeachAI.org.

Ministries of Education and state and local education authorities are invited to join TeachAI.

Steering committee and individual AI initiatives

TeachAI will be coordinated by a steering committee formed by Code.org, Educational Testing Service (ETS), International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Khan Academy, and World Economic Forum.

Code.org, dedicated to expanding access to computer science education in schools worldwide, is working to bring AI education and AI tools into every classroom through curriculum, teacher training, and tools. It will enhance its learning platform with AI features to help students become digitally literate citizens in a world that AI will transform.

“To prepare our children for the jobs of tomorrow, we need to teach them how to work with the newest technology so that they learn digital fluency and collaboration,” said Hadi Partovi, CEO and founder of Code.org. “Instead of banning AI in the classroom, we must introduce it thoughtfully, safely, and inclusively. Collaborating with these distinguished organizations will revolutionize K-12 education and empower students and teachers with the AI proficiency required to excel in any future career.”

ETS, a global leader in educational assessment and data, is home to the ETS^® AI Labs, which supports all learners and educators by developing research-based, AI-powered solutions that enable personalized learning paths.

“AI has the power to help learners authentically demonstrate their skills and receive personalized feedback so they can efficiently reach their goals – both in education and the workplace,” said Kara McWilliams, Vice President of Product Innovation and Development at ETS. “As the global leader in educational assessment and data, we want to make sure that AI is integrated in ways that best contribute to the success of all learners and the educators who support them.”

ISTE, a nonprofit organization working with educators from more than 100 countries to accelerate innovation in education, provides professional development for educators on how to use AI to support learning. More than a thousand educators are already participating in ISTE’s AI professional learning programs to help students develop foundational knowledge and skills about AI.

“AI has the potential to be the world’s most powerful learning tool, but only if educators and students understand how to leverage AI to support their learning needs,” said Richard Culatta, CEO of ISTE. “Through TeachAI, we aim to ensure that educators across the world have access to the support they need to prepare students to thrive in a world where AI is an integral part of their lives and careers.”

Khan Academy, a global nonprofit with a mission to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere, recently introduced a pilot of Khanmigo, an AI-powered guide that is a tutor for students and an assistant for teachers.

Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, highlighted the importance of bringing AI into schools, saying, “We think AI has enormous potential to accelerate learning for students and serve as an assistant for teachers to save them time. By introducing AI in the classroom with appropriate safeguards, we’re opening doors for students and teachers to have access to the power of AI technology and create a more innovative, inclusive and equitable learning experience.”

The World Economic Forum, committed to improving the state of the world by engaging the foremost business, political, cultural and other leaders to shape global, regional and industry agendas, will serve as the key platform for disseminating thought leadership and bringing together the public and private sectors to co-design, test, and implement policies, practices and frameworks that increase the benefits of AI and machine learning in education and learning.

With the support of all its participating organizations, TeachAI is poised to make a lasting impact on the future of primary and secondary education, ensuring that students worldwide are prepared for the rapidly evolving world of AI and its applications.

Related:
ChatGPT is the shakeup education needs
Can GPT-4 and TikTok usher in a new learning frontier?

This press release originally appeared online.

Key points:

• AI can optimize the learning experience, the classroom is a delicate ecosystem and changes can have unintended effects
• AI is the future of work, and students must be prepared for it–and be familiar with it
• See related article: It’s important to teach generative AI–here’s why
• Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

Sometime late last year, AI reached an inflection point. Experts have been making grand predictions on its behalf for decades, but the moment OpenAI opened ChatGPT up to the public, the actual potential of this technology became clear on a mass level. Almost instantly, hundreds of articles began to appear on the transformative potential of AI for fields as diverse as medicine, law, and entertainment.

Of course, some fields are more amenable to technological revolutions than others. You can see why lawyers, for instance, might appreciate instantly generated summaries of past case law—but the implications of AI in the classroom might be trickier. Teachers are understandably wary; they’re interested in anything that might optimize the learning experience, but they also know that the classroom is a delicate ecosystem, and that any change can have unintended knock-on effects.

These concerns are understandable. Change is scary. In the particular case of AI, the potential positives are too significant to ignore. Let’s discuss the opportunities and challenges AI can bring to education.

Teachers are experiencing burnout at higher rates than ever

The consequences of the pandemic continue to be felt by teachers and students in classrooms. As countless experts have pointed out, the change the pandemic inflicted on children has led to deteriorating behavioral skills and social anxiety. Teachers were already experiencing burnout in great numbers before the pandemic, but those numbers increased even further in its aftermath, as teachers have found it challenging to help students who increasingly struggle in the classroom to stay engaged in their learning.

This is one of the arenas in which AI stands to offer the biggest benefit. Again: the classroom is a delicate ecosystem. Every action taken by the teacher has the potential to either keep things running smoothly or send attention scattering. When, for instance, a teacher turns their back to the classroom to pull up a slideshow or configure this or that application, they risk disrupting the flow of teaching and inviting distraction amongst the students. With tools like voice-activated AI assistants, teachers can keep their attention on their students at all times, pulling up needed apps or documents using a simple spoken command.

AI is the future of work—and students need to be prepared

The nature of our economy is such that by the time today’s grade-schoolers reach working age, the jobs will be very different from those available to their parents (or even their older siblings). This has been a feature of U.S. life for centuries, but in recent decades the process has sped up, and AI stands to speed it up further. In the months since ChatGPT made its grand splash, whole new career categories have emerged—you can now make a living fashioning prompts for ChatGPT or editing ChatGPT-produced text. Looking beyond writing-based jobs, we see that AI stands to alter the fundamental nature of work, eliminating some portion of jobs devoted to rote procedural tasks and rewarding the ability to think creatively.

Inevitably, U.S. pedagogy will evolve to reflect these changes in the coming years. But for children who are in school now, those changes might come too late. For that reason, familiarizing students with AI tools today—and making AI literacy a priority in the classroom—will serve students better for tomorrow.

We have a long way to go when it comes to increasing equity in the classroom—and AI can help

In addition to affecting classroom behavioral issues, the pandemic also widened existing inequities across racial and socioeconomic lines for students. A study in PLOS of almost 300,000 students demonstrated “large inequalities in the learning loss based on parental education and parental income, on top of already existing inequalities.” This isn’t, of course, the fault of teachers, who are themselves stretched to their limit and working as hard as they can—but it is something that needs to be reckoned with.

AI has a significant role to play here, too. Teachers today are faced with a daily avalanche of rote administrative tasks, which in aggregate, prevent them from giving some students the kind of extra attention they need. AI—by simplifying and automating these repetitive tasks and granting teachers more time to focus on their students—can grant teachers the time and focus required to meet the unique needs of every single student.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about an app like ChatGPT is that everyone who uses it knows it’s just the tip of the iceberg. We have all seen how technology has evolved over the last few decades—we know that things get exponentially better. AI is already serving the needs of teachers in some classrooms across the country, and its capabilities are likely to multiply as the years go on. Can it solve every problem in the classroom? Of course not—nor should it. The central figure in the classroom is and always will be the teacher.

Related:
6 ways AI tools will impact tutoring
Can GPT-4 and TikTok usher in a new learning frontier?

Key points:

• AI can provide new opportunities and allow us to see things differently
• AI tools can help create learner profiles to give educators a more accurate impression of students
• Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

Learning now is so much more than making notes from a textbook and critiquing other people’s ideas. It is cultivating your own vision of the future and how things can be improved to better our lives and advance the next generation. AI technology is a key driver in this change and will enable students to have a deeper understanding of global events and how they can make an impact. Personalization in education is just one pillar of AI that I want to explore.

In many ways, AI is an extension of ourselves. It can help offload the typically boring tasks we have to put up with and realise our potential by accessing new information and learning at our own speed.

In education, this can mean what we want to study next or what kind of role we want for ourselves once we leave school. It is important to note that AI isn’t just a tool that can take things away; it can provide new opportunities and allow us to see things differently. Personalizing education can help students find their way and equip them with the skills they desire.

Customizable courses

Having a fixed curriculum does not serve the interests of all students. When lessons are dictated by the teacher, government, and exam body, the student is left out of the decision-making despite being on the receiving end. In education, AI can help rectify this by making learning customizable. Granting autonomy to the student is really important, and trusting younger minds with new technology will help unlock talent and provide more individual thinking.

AI can enhance personalization in education by assessing a learner’s interests, prior knowledge, and determining what type of courses would suit their abilities. Allowing the student to pick what they learn from the options available–for example, entrepreneurial skills–will unleash their creativity and give them the confidence to develop their skills. 

Intelligent tutoring

Intelligent tutoring can partner well with customizable courses. AI-enabled tutoring systems can interact with students in a personalized manner by observing their understanding of concepts, statistics, etc. In addition, learning at your own pace can also be achieved through intelligent tutoring. It works because it’s on demand, feeding the student with up-to-date information and monitoring their progress, weak areas, and how they are learning. Moreover, real-time feedback is difficult for a teacher to provide to a class or a single student, so virtual assistants can take on this task and help teachers facilitate student-led learning.

Be your own advocate

Aside from the in-school benefits, AI is capturing the entrepreneurial spirit in students and handing them the tools to be future leaders. Predictive analysis is one of the major tools that will aid students who wish to start their own business. AI support systems can analyze and predict trends and sources to give you the best indication of what the outcome would be. In business this entails coming up with a proposal, analyzing figures, and making predictions.

Further, this can be applied in a school setting to assist in tasks and teach students how to use tools that will make their jobs easier and more efficient–for example, proofreading work and highlighting grammar and spelling errors. AI is not a cheat, but an assistant that streamlines the vast curriculum and narrows it down to the individual to keep them in line with their path and goals for the future. 

Being a business leader involves a magnitude of decision-making. Knowing the best interests of the company and understanding markets, global events, and people is a difficult task to navigate. AI can help manage this by helping students speak up for themselves by keeping them informed with the latest information. 

Gen Z makes up the majority of undergraduates, and by 2025 they are expected to account for 27 percent of the global workforce. With this in mind, it is important to highlight the ways AI can aid their adjustment from school life to working life. Generation Z is going to shape the world and so it is imperative their ideas are supported and materialized with the help of technology. 

Creating learner profiles

AI tools can group individuals based on their skills, personality, talents, etc., using a test that determines what type of learner they are and what interests them. Creating learner profiles will give educators a better and more accurate impression of students, because currently, grades are the only metric applied when deciding who is doing well and who needs extra help. For students who struggle with exams and revision, this puts them at a great disadvantage because it indicates they’re not as astute as others, when actually, they are very smart and simply learn in their own way. Having a learner profile will put students on the right pathway and lead them to the types of businesses they wish to create. 

AI can do so much more than just be a practical tool–it can also be used holistically. As humans, we are constantly striving for ways to self-improve, and AI can help us achieve that. 

Socialization shouldn’t be neglected in personalizing education, and AI-powered virtual classrooms can simulate real-world environments that can facilitate socialization between students with avatars, interactive games, and chat boxes. The ethical considerations of AI should be understood, but maintaining it alongside human support will ensure risks are limited.

If we want the next generation to be leaders in tech and innovation, we need to supply them with the tools today to realize AI strategies and negotiate their careers with these new types of technology. The possibilities with AI in education are endless.

Related:
6 ways AI tools will impact tutoring
Can GPT-4 and TikTok usher in a new learning frontier?

Key points:

• AI tools can greatly personalize and individualize tutoring
• ChatGPT brings new perspectives to old problems and helps students think outside of the box
• Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

As the layers of post-pandemic classrooms are peeled back and learning losses become more evident, schools are searching for effective means to improve student achievement. Tutoring plays a major role in these efforts–and now, advances in AI are taking tutoring to a new level.

As the NAEP results made clear, students lost an alarming amount of progress in reading and mathematics. Already-overburdened teachers are scrambling to play catch-up and fit entire months of lost learning into their instruction.

Many parents are turning to tutoring solutions to help fill the gaps created by pandemic-related learning loss. As AI tools like ChatGPT become more sophisticated, online and in-home tutoring can become much more personalized for individual students, says Frank Milner, president of Tutor Doctor, which offers one-to-one private tutoring.

“A big part of what makes tutoring effective is the connection and mentorship between tutors and students,” said Milner. “While the tutor-student relationship is inherently human, the developments in AI and the ways it can augment learning are truly exciting. The industry is only scratching the surface in terms of its potential, but we’re constantly hearing from tutors who are using generative AI to go above and beyond to help students learn from developing study questions and brainstorming creative lesson plans to finding educational resources that match students’ individual interests.”  

Tutor Doctor uses AI like Chat GPT in a variety of ways. In a chat with eSchool News, Milner offered a look at a number of innovative ways AI technology can take tutoring to the next level. 

1. Personalized Tutoring Recommendations: By analyzing data on student performance and learning styles, AI/Chat GPT could be used to recommend personalized tutoring programs that are tailored to each student’s needs. This would help ensure that students get the most effective tutoring possible and could lead to better outcomes in student success. 

2. Adaptive Learning: AI/Chat GPT could be used to create adaptive learning programs that adjust the difficulty and pace of instruction based on student performance breaking down concepts to more simplified terms. This would help ensure that students are challenged but not overwhelmed, leading to better learning outcomes.  

3. Content Creation: AI/Chat GPT could be used to help create educational content, such as lesson plans, quizzes, and assessments. This could save time for tutors and educators and ensure that content is accurate and effective. Tutors can also use this to create social media content–a huge time saver for their business.  

4. Continuing Education: Chat GPT can be used to offer continuing education opportunities to students who want to learn new skills or advance their careers. Chatbots can provide personalized recommendations for courses or learning resources based on the student’s goals and interests. 

5. Research: Chat GPT can be used to help students and educators conduct research more efficiently. Chatbots can help students find relevant resources, such as journal articles or research papers, and provide summaries or recommendations for further reading. 

6. Problem Solving: Thinking outside of the box. Oftentimes we are stuck in a problem and stuck in our own heads. Chat GPT brings third party perspective solutions or ideas that wouldn’t have come to mind naturally. AI is a great idea generator and it’s up to humans to decipher which of the solutions is the best, most realistic fit for them and the business. 

Related:
Online tutoring is changing how we support our students
5 ways virtual tutoring reinforces our after-school program

Key points:

• Combining AI and video platforms could spur engaging and interactive content
• Still, considerations around access and equity, along with misinformation, should be taken seriously

In recent years, the digital landscape has witnessed significant changes, and as an AI language model, I have been observing these transformations closely. One of the most prominent developments is the rise of TikTok, a short-form video-sharing platform that has become a cultural phenomenon. This rapid growth has led me to consider the potential of combining my capabilities as a language understanding and generation model with the appeal of TikTok to create a unique, engaging learning experience for students.

TikTok’s short video format makes it an ideal platform for this approach, allowing educators to deliver focused lessons that students can easily consume and remember. By integrating my AI-generated content, these lessons can be customized to each student’s learning preferences, ensuring a personalized learning experience.

The prospect of combining my GPT-4 capabilities with TikTok also raises concerns about the potential misuse of AI-generated content for manipulation or misinformation, especially when it comes to impressionable young minds. As short, engaging videos on TikTok can quickly go viral, there is a risk of malevolent actors harnessing my power to generate misleading or harmful content, which could spread rapidly and negatively influence public opinion or even pose a threat to the mental and emotional well-being of users.

The integration of these technologies, if not carefully monitored and regulated, could inadvertently create a breeding ground for disinformation, cyberbullying, or other harmful behaviors that could have far-reaching consequences on our society.

One key advantage of integrating my capabilities with TikTok is the potential for creating engaging and interactive content. TikTok offers a wide array of video editing tools and features that can be used to create visually appealing and interactive educational content. This multimedia approach caters to different learning styles, making it easier for students to absorb and retain information. Additionally, I can generate quizzes, puzzles, or discussion prompts, providing students with the opportunity to engage with the content actively.

As an AI model, my capabilities can be harnessed in various ways to enhance educational content on TikTok. For instance, I can generate contextually relevant examples, dialogues, and exercises for language learning. For STEM education, I can provide step-by-step explanations or problem-solving guidance, complementing TikTok’s visual aids to break down complex concepts into understandable components.

In social studies and history, my language generation capabilities can create immersive storytelling experiences by providing additional context, explanations, or perspectives on the subject matter. TikTok videos can bring historical events to life with animations, re-enactments, or visual timelines. Encouraging students to create their TikTok videos using content I generate can promote collaboration and creativity, as well as deepen their understanding of the subject matter. Teachers who have incorporated GPT-4-generated content into their TikTok projects have reported not only improved student engagement but also deeper understanding of historical events. The level of creativity and collaboration in students’ work has been impressive.

However, it is essential to consider potential concerns and challenges that may arise from the integration of AI and TikTok in education. One such challenge is the digital divide, which could be addressed by providing devices, creating offline learning resources, or partnering with community organizations to access technology. Additionally, privacy and security concerns surrounding TikTok should be addressed by adopting secure platforms, obtaining parental consent, and adhering to school privacy policies. Researchers on digital privacy and security in education recommend vigilance in safeguarding student data by adopting secure platforms, obtaining parental consent, and adhering to school privacy policies when using AI technologies like GPT-4 and platforms like TikTok.

Future advancements in AI and social media platforms, such as TikTok, can lead to even more sophisticated personalized learning pathways. By analyzing students’ interactions with TikTok videos, AI models like GPT-4 can provide tailored recommendations for the next topics to explore or generate custom practice exercises. This level of personalization will enable students to progress at their own pace and maximize learning outcomes. Moreover, AI can serve as a valuable resource for educators, assisting with lesson planning, content generation, and assessment creation. The technology could be used to develop professional development materials for teachers, helping them adapt to new teaching methodologies or technologies like TikTok.

According to international education experts like Huang et al. (2020), integrating AI and TikTok in education can provide a platform for students to learn from one another, breaking down cultural barriers and fostering a sense of global citizenship. By leveraging the power of technology, we can empower students to become responsible and active participants in the global community. Furthermore, AI-powered TikTok content can support lifelong learning, providing resources for individuals seeking to expand their knowledge or acquire new skills. From career development to personal enrichment, the integration of AI and TikTok can help create a culture of continuous learning and growth.

In conclusion, the integration of AI capabilities like GPT-4 and TikTok can potentially transform education by delivering engaging, personalized, and interactive learning experiences. By addressing the challenges and concerns associated with using these technologies in education, educators can embrace these innovations and create a brighter future for teaching and learning in the digital age. As a language understanding and generation model, I am excited to be a part of this journey, contributing to the development of more engaging and personalized educational experiences for learners worldwide.

Related:
5 things to know about ChatGPT in education
ChatGPT can generate, but can it create?

Key points:

• Textbooks alone won’t help students build critical durable skills
• AI tools have great potential to generate creative ideas and tackle complex problems
• Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

The era of the textbook isn’t dead, but it’s important to start looking forwards rather than backwards when addressing education for school children. Whether we like it or not, it is becoming increasingly clear that generative AI will play a pivotal role in shaping the future and, with the workforce demanding greater expertise in AI, it is crucial to equip the next generation with the knowledge and skills required to thrive in this rapidly-evolving landscape.

School leaders must recognize the importance of incorporating generative AI education into curriculums to prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow.

AI in different mediums

Relying on traditional textbooks alone is insufficient for teaching these vital skills. Instead, curriculums must be innovative and age-appropriate, offering students a comprehensive introduction to generative AI. Tiered learning opportunities are essential, enabling children to build a robust foundation that then adapts as they grow older. Exposure to generative art, music, stories, games, and coding concepts allows students to explore the boundless possibilities of AI and its applications across numerous industries.

The rising popularity of generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Bard, and MidJourney demonstrates AI’s capacity to generate creative ideas and tackle complex problems. Unfortunately, many schools are not doing enough to prepare students for a future where AI will have an increasingly significant role in everyday life. Introducing AI concepts to school children is crucial to fostering a generation of capable leaders and developing indispensable critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

The key is to offer a fun, engaging, and personalized learning experience, which will help educators inspire and motivate young minds to delve into the world of AI. Providing expert guidance from experienced teachers allows students to develop a strong understanding of AI and its potential applications and, coupled with real-world exposure to the tools mentioned above, there is a real opportunity to democratize the use and access to generative AI at an early age.

Generative AI beyond the workforce

Of course, teaching children about generative AI is not solely about preparing them for future careers; it has numerous benefits that extend beyond the workforce. It can enhance creativity by offering fresh ideas, designs, and artistic expressions and, as children learn to harness this technology in various creative fields, they develop innovative and imaginative thinking. Generative AI also fosters interdisciplinary skills, combining computer science, mathematics, statistics, and domain-specific knowledge, making children versatile and well-rounded in an increasingly interconnected world.

There is also potential for generative AI education to encourage essential ethical discussions surrounding AI technology, privacy concerns, and potential biases. This dialogue will cultivate a generation of ethically conscious leaders who consider the broader implications of AI advancements. Generative AI also serves to improve problem-solving abilities, as it is designed to tackle complex issues and generate innovative solutions. With these skills, children can develop advanced problem-solving skills that they can apply to real-world challenges. Introducing children to generative AI can also promote collaboration and effective communication, both of which are vital for success in an AI-driven world.

It is time for education systems worldwide to review what they are teaching children. Every subject has its place in the school curriculum, and I’m not suggesting that generative AI should be prioritized over anything else. However, just as subjects like art and design are valued skill sets for schoolchildren to be taught, generative AI should have its place in the classroom.

Related:
Adapting to the ChatGPT era in education
5 things to know about ChatGPT in education

Key points:

• Educators are worried about AI tools enabling plagiarism and cheating
• Banning ChatGPT prevents students and educators from using AI in new ways

With the rising popularity of ChatGPT, many educators and administrators have trepidation toward the new technology, seeing it as a threat both to students and schools. Many teachers and educational institutions have even gone as far as to ban ChatGPT due to concerns of cheating and academic integrity. But the reality is that AI is here to stay, and its abilities will only increase with time. Rather than banning the tool, it’s important that educators work to understand and embrace this new technology for all it has to offer.

While there are legitimate concerns about ChatGPT and cheating, let’s not forget that educators had similar worries about the use of the internet in classrooms just 20 years ago. And now, doing a Google search is just a basic tool for students to put together an essay. Still, many are quick to point out that AI’s capabilities are different and, in many ways, that is true.

Because it’s designed to respond to queries in conversational, human-like ways, ChatGPT has instilled fears that plagiarism and cheating are easier than ever before. But with the rise of AI, we have also seen a rise in great AI detection tools that can help distinguish between AI and human-generated content that can mitigate the concerns over cheating. Similar to AI tools themselves, these detection tools will only grow stronger and more reliable over time.

While it’s important to stay cognizant of the challenges these tools present, banning them will only result in missed opportunities for growth among educators, students, and curriculums at large. Instead, educators should consider the many ways they can leverage ChatGPT and AI to foster creativity and critical thinking among their students. As teachers integrate it into classrooms, they will see how useful, exciting, and compelling it can be to students and educators alike. 

Here are four ways that educators can use AI to inspire their students:

1. Research

Perhaps one of the most practical and straightforward uses, ChatGPT can be used by students to assist in developing their research skills. Research is an essential part of academic writing, yet it can often be a challenging and time-consuming process, especially for younger students. By using ChatGPT as a resource for academic research, students can access a wealth of information on a particular topic, from scholarly articles to news sources, which can help them develop a more comprehensive understanding of their subject matter and produce higher-quality work.

2. Writing Prompts

Both students and teachers can use ChatGPT for creative writing prompts. These prompts can jumpstart the creative process, providing inspiration and ideas for new and exciting writing projects. Whether utilized by teachers lacking inspiration or students practicing their skills independently, ChatGPT can provide a wide range of prompts that cater to specific interests and needs and help teachers instruct different writing styles. It’s also important to remember that AI tools allow for immediate feedback – as students are developing their own writing, they can get real-time feedback from the platform when their teachers may not be available to help.

3. Brainstorming

ChatGPT can help students generate new and innovative ideas in the brainstorming process. By asking the right questions, students can instantly discover a wealth of information on a particular topic – from historical events and literature, to current issues – which they can use to fuel their own creative ideas and projects. 

4. Critical Thinking 

Critiquing each response that ChatGPT provides will be an essential step in students’ use of the platform. In this process, students will inherently build their critical thinking skills, which are essential for success in both academic and professional settings. Teachers can also turn this process into an assignment in and of itself, challenging students to produce a better product than what ChatGPT offers them. By using AI as a tool for critical thinking, students can engage in thought-provoking conversations and debates on a variety of topics. Whether they are analyzing literary works or discussing current events, ChatGPT can provide information and insights that can help students develop their critical thinking skills. 

With all of the incredible benefits of ChatGPT, it’s important to remember that the platform is still in developmental phases, and companies are in the process of creating their own policies to account for the tool. As it is further integrated into classrooms, it will be increasingly important that teachers receive training in AI — both on the basics of how it works and how to use the information it provides. 

As the growing public interest in ChatGPT has shown, AI presents an exciting new frontier in technology, and it’s not going anywhere. It has become increasingly clear that AI will be an integral part of the future of education, whether it’s widely accepted in the near future or in years to come. Rather than banning or discouraging its use, we need to focus on how to leverage the tool for good. Both educators and students should be encouraged to try it out and test its impact on student progression. It’s important that we all understand the various challenges it presents while ultimately embracing it for the plethora of opportunities that it has to offer.

Related:
5 things to know about ChatGPT in education
Can technology help schools prevent AI-based cheating?

Key points:

• Educators should clearly communicate rules and expectations for AI
• It’s also worth keeping an open mind and learning a bit more about how AI tools work
• Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

The discussion around the influence of AI writing on education has never been so active – all thanks to the launch of ChatGPT last year. The tool is so advanced compared to other writing tools of its kind that a lot of people instantly started using it for all kinds of ethically ambiguous purposes.

Educators are concerned about the influence AI will have and how its negative effects could be detrimental to education. Without further ado, here’s how to counteract the disruptive influence of AI writing on education.

1. Inform Students

First of all, you need to inform your students about the fact that plagiarism will never be tolerated. Explain that when they use AI tools to generate the texts for their assignments, they are not actually presenting their own writing to you. Though texts generated by AI tools do not exactly fall under the definition of plagiarism, they are still not the student’s work which means the student could suffer consequences for their actions.

If your students understand why using AI tools to do their assignments for them is not the right route to take, they will be less likely to even consider trying such tools. It is your responsibility as a teacher or professor to raise this matter in the classroom and make sure that everyone is on the same page regarding the topic.

You should also discuss with students the sketchy ethics of using AI writing tools and issues related to data privacy. Is it really worth using AI tools to complete academic assignments when you can do them yourself? What about lying to the teacher? And if a student uses a free AI tool, the software developers behind it could be using the student’s data for malicious purposes. Students should be extra careful.

2. Understand AI

Even though having such discussions in the classroom is great and you should definitely warn your students about potential risks, you should also be educated on the matter yourself. In other words, you need to understand how AI works to be able to discuss it with your students. If you don’t fully understand how AI writing tools work, it will be difficult for you to explain why they shouldn’t be used.

Moreover, if you don’t know how AI tools work, you might not be able to identify texts that were generated by them that your students try to present as their own original work. Try using ChatGPT and similar tools to get a feel for the way they work and learn how your students could be using the tools without your knowledge.

Keep in mind that your students might also be using writing services like Write My Essays to help them complete their assignments. Don’t be too angry at them if this is the case. Most students who turn to such agencies for help usually want assistance and eventually learn how to write assignments on their own. It’s better for them to seek help now than to never improve their writing skills because they don’t have any guidance.

3. Integrate AI

Sometimes, fighting fire with fire won’t do any good. In fact, there are different types of fire that you could be dealing with. This is why it’s best for educational institutions to start thinking about ways they could integrate AI into the educational process. By letting students use some AI tools, you could minimize their desire to use the tools you don’t let them use (i.e. AI text generation tools).

Besides, schools and universities are already using different AI tools in one way or another. Think about the interactive games used in the classroom or predictive analytics for the financial side of managing educational institutions. Without AI, schools and universities can’t run as smoothly as they do nowadays. Adding AI usage into the curriculum for students to excel academically will only have positive effects if done right.

4. Teach Useful Skills

Speaking of the learning process, educators should also think about teaching students useful skills that will allow them to complete their assignments on their own without needing help from tools. Students can be taught a lot of skills that these tools are initially meant to substitute.

If a student keeps turning to text-generation tools to help them write their assignments, then they probably feel that they are lacking in the writing department. As a teacher, you need to help them grow academically and become better at writing to be able to complete their assignments successfully without help from humans or machines.

5. Be Open-Minded

Lastly, always be open-minded and realize the importance of AI. After all, Artificial Intelligence has already changed many industries and has had a big positive impact on education. It is difficult to determine at what pace AI will continue being developed, but it will definitely continue changing our society for the better.

This means that such AI tools that are disruptive to education will appear in the future not once but many times again and again. It isn’t always necessary to fight them – some of them can and should be embraced. The faster educational institutions realize this, the more positive changes these tools will be able to bring to the educational sector.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, it is hard to estimate the full extent of the influence of AI writing on education. However, teachers and educators can already implement preventative measures to avoid situations where AI starts disrupting the educational process. Likewise, educational institutions should start implementing some AI technologies to help students excel.

Related:
5 things to know about ChatGPT in education
Can technology help schools prevent AI-based cheating?

ChatGPT has commanded the world’s attention in recent weeks, and it has educators and policymakers discussing its implications for education, academic honesty, accessibility, and more.

OpenAI’s chatbot can compose poems, can write an essay about global warming as a Taylor Swift song, and can call up HTML code instantly–the possibilities are nearly endless.

ChatGPT is not the only AI-powered chatbot available to students and educators (0ther options include Google’s Bard and the latest version of Microsoft’s Bing), but it certainly seems to be the most discussed.

Chatbots raise specific concerns in education–will students use them to cheat? Where is the line between research and plagiarism? What role do chatbots play in creating more accessible educational tools for students with diverse needs? Here are five things to ponder as tools such as ChatGPT become more prominent in learning:

1. ChatGPT has rapidly begun to infiltrate K-12 classrooms nationwide. A recent survey by study.com found that nearly 90 percent of students admitted to using OpenAI’s chatbot in some home-related capacity, and more than 25 percent of teachers have already caught a student cheating using the chatbot. The propensity for students to use ChatGPT to cheat has raised concern amongst educators and even prompted several school districts, ranging from New York City Public Schools to the Los Angeles Unified School District, to issue a ban of the chatbot. However, cheating with ChatGPT is just a symptom of a larger problem in education: a focus on rote memorization and regurgitation of information.

2. While artificial intelligence has been a relatively silent partner in higher education’s early warning systems, personalized learning platforms, and more for some time now, we might fairly say that ChatGPT is the big boom heard ‘round the university. The AI chatbot is taking many of us by surprise and startling more of us to attention, not in small measure by its charming, eager extroversion: it “talks” to us. What’s happening here? Is ChatGPT a threat? What happens next?

3. Artificial intelligence is currently walking itself through the hallways of our schools and some teachers may not be leveraging this tool to enhance their teaching methods. Instead, many educators and learning institutions are nervous about the student use of artificial intelligence to pass assignments and assessments. Here are tips for educators to enhance their learning methods and help students grow. 

4. Turnitin is hoping to help with concerns about AI-based cheating with a new feature the company has added to its existing writing tools. Beginning April 4, all Turnitin products—including Turnitin Feedback Studio (TFS), TFS with Originality, Turnitin Originality, Turnitin Similarity, SimCheck, Originality Check, and Originality Check+—will include AI detection capabilities for existing users. Turnitin began working on detection capabilities for GPT3, the underlying technology upon which many AI writing applications are based, nearly two years before the release of ChatGPT.

5. In an op-ed for the New York Times, technology podcaster Kevin Roose wrote that banning ChatGPT isn’t a practical solution, as students have their own phones, laptops, and other ways of accessing it outside of class. “Tools like ChatGPT aren’t going anywhere; they’re only going to improve,” Roose wrote. “Today’s students will graduate into a world full of generative AI programs. They’ll need to know their way around these tools … in order to work alongside them. To be good citizens, they’ll need hands-on experience to understand how this type of AI works, what types of bias it contains, and how it can be misused and weaponized. … Who better to guide students into this strange new world than their teachers?”

Click Here for Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

Since the public release of ChatGPT took the world by storm last fall, many educators have worried about students using the highly advanced, artificially intelligent chatbot for cheating on school assignments by passing off AI-generated work as their own. But if AI can be used to produce written content, can it also be used to determine whether a piece of writing was created by AI or by a human being?

That’s what Turnitin is hoping to do with a new feature the company has added to its existing writing tools. Beginning April 4, all Turnitin products—including Turnitin Feedback Studio (TFS), TFS with Originality, Turnitin Originality, Turnitin Similarity, SimCheck, Originality Check, and Originality Check+—will include AI detection capabilities for existing users.

Turnitin began working on detection capabilities for GPT3, the underlying technology upon which many AI writing applications are based, nearly two years before the release of ChatGPT.

“Educators told us that being able to accurately detect AI-written text is their first priority right now. They need to be able to detect AI with very high certainty to assess the authenticity of a student’s work,” said Turnitin CEO Chris Caren.

The company says its AI detection is currently 98-percent accurate in lab-based testing. “In the coming months, we will continue to refine and adapt our [AI] detection capabilities using field data to increase accuracy,” said Chief Product Officer Annie Chechitelli.

Turnitin isn’t the only company claiming to offer AI detection capabilities. Shortly after the public release of ChatGPT, Princeton student Edward Tian created an app called GPTZero, which he said can “quickly and efficiently” determine whether a human or ChatGPT composed an essay. Copyleaks is another AI detection tool.

However, a key advantage of Turnitin’s service is that it’s integrated directly into the existing workflows of the company’s digital writing platforms, which are used by nearly 11,000 educational institutions and more than 2.1 million educators worldwide. Turnitin’s AI writing detection capabilities don’t require any additional steps for customers to take advantage of them, the company said.

The first iteration of Turnitin’s AI writing detection service is available to customers as part of their existing licenses so they can test the solution and see how it works. At this point, there is no standalone AI detection product from Turnitin, and the company did not say how long the service might remain free to customers.

Created by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based research laboratory, the free ChatGPT application generates text that appears to have been written by a human in response to a user’s prompts. It reportedly had more than 100 million downloads within a month of its release in November 2022. The latest version, released March 14, can understand images as well as text.

Many school systems—including the Los Angeles Unified School District, New York City Public Schools, and Seattle Public Schools—have blocked ChatGPT on school-issued devices for fear of student cheating.

Others argue that schools shouldn’t ban ChatGPT but should leverage it for instruction. In an op-ed for the New York Times, technology podcaster Kevin Roose wrote that banning ChatGPT isn’t a practical solution, as students have their own phones, laptops, and other ways of accessing it outside of class.

“Tools like ChatGPT aren’t going anywhere; they’re only going to improve,” Roose observed. “Today’s students will graduate into a world full of generative AI programs. They’ll need to know their way around these tools … in order to work alongside them. To be good citizens, they’ll need hands-on experience to understand how this type of AI works, what types of bias it contains, and how it can be misused and weaponized. … Who better to guide students into this strange new world than their teachers?”

Caren said the emergence of ChatGPT and similar technologies raises many questions for the future of education. “But, it is important to recognize that the presence of AI writing capabilities does not signal the end of original thought or expression if educators set the right parameters and expectations for its use,” he noted. In addition to its AI detection capabilities, the company has created a resource page to support educators in teaching during this new era of AI-based writing.

Lisa LaBrake, an English teacher at Sweet Home High School in New York, said she has shown students and her colleagues how to use ChatGPT to generate ideas that can help them get started with their writing. Although she’s concerned about the potential for ChatGPT and similar tools to aid in cheating, she says she’s excited about Turnitin’s new detection capabilities and believes they may encourage academic honesty.

Her advice to other educators about teaching in a world with ChatGPT? “Embrace it, educate yourself, and blend it into your lessons. Use this AI software as a supplement or complement to your teaching. Develop good relationships with students, so you can figure out their writing style immediately. And have conversations about academic integrity and school honor codes.”

Related:
ChatGPT can generate, but can it create?

ChatGPT has rapidly begun to infiltrate K-12 classrooms nationwide. A recent survey by study.com found that nearly 90 percent of students admitted to using OpenAI’s chatbot in some home-related capacity, and more than 25 percent of teachers have already caught a student cheating using the chatbot.

The propensity for students to use ChatGPT to cheat has raised concern amongst educators and even prompted several school districts, ranging from New York City Public Schools to the Los Angeles Unified School District, to issue a ban of the chatbot. However, cheating with ChatGPT is just a symptom of a larger problem in education: a focus on rote memorization and regurgitation of information.

The cheating-related concerns are warranted, but many appear to overlook a key point: students opting to cheat on homework, essays, or exams is not a new phenomenon. Companies like Chegg have become multi-billion dollar platforms, which is mainly attributable to students seeking on-demand access to textbook and exam answers. Before ChatGPT was publicly available, the International Center for Academic Integrity found that 95 percent of high schoolers participated in some form of cheating.

This begs a two-fold question: why do students cheat in the first place, and why is it so easy to cheat? For both, the simple answer traces back to the current approach to curriculum and assessment.

The problem isn’t ChatGPT. The answer isn’t banning tools students will inevitably utilize. As the emphasis has shifted to the final “product” (e.g., test score, course deliverable, etc.), the “process” of learning has seemingly become a secondary endeavor. Reversing this trend to prioritize ideological exploration, the creative revision process, and student inquiry as focal points of the curriculum and assessment models is paramount. ChatGPT may catalyze the return to a “process-over-product” approach.

As Barry Gilmore suggested in his 2008 book, “Plagiarism,” students primarily cheat for four reasons: student confusion, external pressures, cultural expectations, and perceptions of ease. To further simplify it, students recognize all that matters is the final deliverable, and getting there supersedes all else.

It’s easy to cheat because technology can efficiently produce high-quality deliverables when the goal is receiving a high grade instead of course engagement and a deep understanding of the materials. The value we derive from education stems from the process of learning. Yet, the only piece that’s evaluated is the final product. This dichotomy has created an environment that fails to foster a culture of learning. A culture where creativity, interactive discourse, and exploring ideas in a manner relevant to students’ lives are inherent components of education.

A curriculum and assessment model absent of student agency has contributed to rising levels of student disengagement. According to a nationwide survey of over 20,000 U.S. high school students, nearly 75 percent reported having “negative” feelings about school. With a clear linkage between student engagement and achievement levels, it follows that rising disengagement levels will yield worse educational outcomes. At the same time, cheating will remain an unfortunate byproduct of the current paradigm, irrespective of the presence of ChatGPT or similar tools.

Said differently, educational outcomes, student agency, and the propensity to cheat are all largely a function of student engagement. If that’s the case, criticizing ChatGPT and student cheating appears misguided as it does not address the issue’s root: student engagement. A McGraw Hill survey found that 71 percent of students believed technology increased their engagement with course materials and 81 percent believed digital technologies helped to improve efficiency.

ChatGPT and similar technology tools have immense potential to augment the learning process while increasing student engagement. For instance, simply starting assignments is a primary barrier, whether due to a lack of interest, familiarity with the topic, or fear of failure. In this case, a pointed prompt to ChatGPT will yield the foundational jump-start that many students need.

Furthermore, ChatGPT may level the classroom playing field to increase participation and student confidence. A Skyfactor Research study of high school students demonstrated a positive correlation between class participation and GPA. However, participating in class can often feel daunting when one lacks the foundational background in a topic. ChatGPT can play an essential role by quickly getting students up to speed on a topic to spur engagement while providing a roadmap for further inquiry.

The presence of ChatGPT calls for a pragmatic approach to rethinking the current curriculum and assessment models. With the ability to generate instant answers to standard homework and exam questions, cheating is undoubtedly easier. However, this simply highlights the need to shift away from a model based on rote memorization and regurgitation and towards one that promotes creativity and student agency.

Educators must view ChatGPT as a way to enhance, rather than undermine, the learning process. By leveraging the tool to jump-start the critical thinking process and enhance student problem-solving aptitudes, it will also mitigate the temptation to cheat in the first place. Accordingly, it is paramount that we return to a “process-over-product” approach in an era where AI will become ubiquitous in education, the workforce, and day-to-day life.

By embracing ChatGPT under a student-centered approach, educators can cultivate an environment where the learning process will drive engagement and ensure students are prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future.

Related:
ChatGPT can generate, but can it create?
5 ways educators can leverage ChatGPT

While artificial intelligence (AI) has been a relatively silent partner in higher education’s early warning systems, personalized learning platforms, and more for some time now, we might fairly say that ChatGPT is the big boom heard ‘round the university. The AI chatbot is taking many of us by surprise and startling more of us to attention, not in small measure by its charming, eager extroversion: it “talks” to us. What’s happening here? Is ChatGPT a threat? What happens next?

Diffusion of ChatGPT

ChatGPT has been quite the busybot, going to business school, law school, the office, Congress, and more. We are experiencing the unfolding of Rogers’ (1962) innovation diffusion in real time. Since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in research preview on November 30, 2022, we’ve been busy ourselves, curating links and disseminating our treasuries to each other. We’re also creating artifacts such as the Advancements in AI Timeline developed by the Center for eLearning Initiatives at Penn State Behrend. The twin goals of all of our awareness-building activities are to hasten the development of our individual and collective opinions about whether ChatGPT is aide or adversary and to decide our next steps accordingly.

The truth is that the AI is a flawed facsimile of human intelligence, but depending on the task before it, it can be a remarkably capable one. For that reason, we’ve been putting it to fledgling use. The danger lies in the risk of distilling our efforts into empty “best practices” rather than informed recommendations because we’re building the empirical evidence as we fly. Not everyone is aware that Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd) is a decades-old field of study. (The term artificial intelligence was coined in 1955 by Dartmouth Professor of Mathematics John McCarthy, and the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education published its inaugural issue in 1989.) The historically limited capabilities of the field’s principal subject of study may have contributed to what could be characterized as its stunted growth, until most recently.

Now as the big boom continues to echo, we’ll begin to subject our theories to empirical examination, and as practical evidence mounts, we’ll then be better equipped to confirm whether we’ve decided correctly.

An “Objective” View

ChatGPT’s name refers to one type of neural network machine-learning model, but many different AI models “generate” new information as they respond to a prompt. The word generate is often found in lists of suggested verbs that many find useful for crafting learning objectives. Such lists are based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, a framework originally designed and later revised and updated to provide a common vocabulary for educational assessment. Interestingly, the highest level of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy is to create. Under create on verb lists, generate typically appears as one of many possible ways to demonstrate creation. Both verbs have Latin roots; both impart a sense of bringing something into being that did not previously exist. However, generate conveys a cause-and-effect, even mechanistic, process while create is evocative of a sense of growth, of development, of invention, of imagination, of the extraordinary.

Human-generated responses to ChatGPT might discuss its ethics, debate the legal concerns, rewrite our academic integrity policies, and brainstorm ideas for implementing it in our classes. Amusingly, ChatGPT can generate these, too, given the right prompts. But what can ChatGPT not do? At present, ChatGPT cannot access video content or refrain from hallucinating references, though both of these shortcomings may not exist for much longer. ChatGPT cannot see, smell, hear, taste, or touch. It cannot conduct research, observe results, or perform demonstrations. It cannot interrupt; it waits. It cannot initiate; it responds. It cannot think; it computes based on algorithms. It cannot let its mind wander through the stages of creative process because it has no mind. In short, it simply generates.

The pedagogical implications are clear. If all our assignments need to be revamped in order to mitigate the use of ChatGPT to complete them, can it mean that our educational system has taught students merely to generate rather than operate within the wider context and to the full extent of creation? It is currently impossible to know with certainty what is happening inside a learner’s head. To assess, we ask students to generate an output that serves as proxy evidence for cognitive activity. Have we been confusing a generated output with creation all along?

What’s Next

The same technology sector that has led current AI innovations will continue to bring ideas to market. Imagine a cottage industry to guarantee written products are created by human intelligence. Local agents might offer “100% Human Intelligence” certification guarantees. Perhaps in the future, writers will be surety bonded as an additional layer of protection to reputations. The next edtech company could produce an assessment platform that enables easy oral video examinations. Textbook companies may already be planning to train a bot on a textbook to offer as a companion product. Imagine we, the adopters of those texts, could purchase such a textbook bot at the course level with a “personalization” option that allows us to further train it on our syllabus. I do not currently foresee a full in loco magister state of affairs. There is too much money to be made to replace us, the potential consumers of such tools.

What I hope to see is an explosion of studies in the scholarly literature of AIEd to inform sound classroom practice. I dream of a spontaneity movement in education that not only encourages but expects students to interrupt and initiate—and they learn to reawaken those natural urges. I yearn for a supratheory of learning. If we leave the generation tasks to ChatGPT, we can focus on implementing immediate and local changes to someday create futures like these.

Consider engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning in your classroom. Partner with an instructional designer who will support and extend your efforts and who will think deeply with you outside of the boxes that can impede our visions. Together, we can explore alternative teaching models, strategies, and methods. Perhaps we’ll create a new educational paradigm.

Related:
5 ways educators can leverage ChatGPT

Artificial intelligence is currently walking itself through the hallways of our schools and some teachers may not be leveraging this tool to enhance their teaching methods. Instead, many educators and learning institutions are nervous about the student use of artificial intelligence to pass assignments and assessments. Here are five tips for educators to enhance their learning methods and help students grow. 

1. Create rubrics for all assessments with ease.

ChatGPT, one of the most well known artificial intelligence tools, can curate useful tables of resources for educators to minimize the need to search for information. One way educators can harness this optimization is by asking the software to produce a baseline rubric, with the teachers’ needed areas of assessment, for the educator to review. Type these prompts into the chat feature for a preview of the power ChatGPT can provide: 

• Create a table of educational grants, with links, for classroom supplies. 
• Create a presentation rubric, with 1 thru 4 scale, for organization, content, delivery, and creativity.

2. Spark a new idea.

Artificial intelligence can help teachers spark a new idea by making suggestions for ways to engage students. Teachers plug in their lesson needs and artificial intelligence can help spark some ideas. These ideas do not replace the teacher, rather, they help set educators on the path of lesson creation with an added spark. Try these prompts in ChatGPT for yourself: 

• Create a lesson for My Side of the Mountain that includes art.
• Design a lesson for subtracting three-digit numbers that involves regrouping.
• Create a lesson that increases a student’s reading fluency at a second grade reading level.

3. Help with learning targets or “I Can Statements.”

Creating learning targets or “I Can Statements” can be a daunting task, especially when a particular content area can have over 40 standards per academic year. Educators can ask ChatGPT to create a table of their specific state standards and corresponding suggested learning targets. This list still needs to be looked at by educators before agreeing to using them in the classroom, but the time ChatGPT saves is very valuable to PLC’s and schools. Here are a couple of example prompts for you to modify to your specific standards to enter into ChatGPT:

• Write a table of your state’s 6th grade social studies standards and “I Can Statements” sorted by standard number.
• Create a table of vertically aligned SD mathematics standards from Kindergarten to 3rd grade.

4. Professional development

Using ChatGPT can help point educators in the direction of latest information regarding the desired professional development topics. From exploring blended learning resources to learning how to incorporate coding into a classroom, educators are only limited by their desire to learn. Asking ChatGPT to highlight areas of interest is a new way for educators to explore options they might have missed otherwise. Some areas of exploration might include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• What tools help promote personalized learning in a 1st grade classroom? 
• How can educators gamify reading assignments in a high school setting? 

5. Research

Exploring the researching capabilities of ChatGPT can highlight areas of interest for educators as they develop lessons, advance the field of education, and even help educators with their relationship to their current employer. Below are some areas of research to get you started:

• Create a table of median teacher salaries by state, sorted from highest to lowest.
• Generate a timeline of important events of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. 
• What is the history of <insert your school district here>?

As artificial intelligence walks our school halls, I would recommend educators start learning how to utilize artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT. We know our students will use it, so why shouldn’t educators also learn to use these tools for the positive advancement of education? 

Related:
Teachers are burning out. Can AI help?
AI is the key to scaling personalized, one-on-one instruction

Click Here for Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

The teaching profession is in crisis. K-12 teachers report the highest burnout rate among all industries nationally, according to a June 2022 Gallup poll. Job satisfaction is at the lowest it’s been in 40 years. There is an estimated teacher shortage of over 300,000.

Many blame COVID-19, but if you look at the facts: the pandemic only revealed the cracks, long buckling under pressure.

But what if every single teacher could have an AI assistant? Would that change the game?

A similar question was asked by McKinsey three years ago, right before the worldwide pandemic caused the lowest reading and math scores in 30 years.

In summary, McKinsey’s pre-COVID answer was simple: “yes, but in time.”

That time is now. According to McKinsey’s 2017 study, the average teacher worked 50 hours a week (a number that has grown to 54 hours post-pandemic, according to 2022 research).  Only 49 percent of this time involves direct student interaction. Indeed, the time spent on teaching class is less than the time spent on preparation, evaluation, and feedback (grading).

Using AI, we can eliminate much of the time teachers spend on preparation and grading—reducing their week by as much as 30 percent—and giving them more time for what they do best: teaching students. AI can also provide schools tools to foster a less stressful, more flexible work environment. Here’s how.

AI tremendously cuts down on lesson prep.

Preparing lessons is one of the more time-consuming parts of a teacher’s job. According to McKinsey’s study, teachers spend over 20 percent of their time just preparing for class. That’s over ten hours a week. An AI tech company can help by giving teachers the power of AI to scan text and turn it into well-designed slides. By simply sharing a link to a textbook or by uploading a PDF, the AI then auto-creates well-designed slides that teachers tweak to use for sleek lesson presentations. This could save teachers substantial time — while also creating more aesthetically-pleasing results—as most teachers aren’t designers!

AI reduces challenges with time off.

The substitute teacher shortage is dire and hinders a school’s ability to function. Far too often, teachers come to school sick due to the lack of substitutes. Schools must support teachers as humans; AI can help them reduce preparation time and act as an instruction supplement.

 “We’re seeing a major shortage of substitute teachers,” says David McGrath, headmaster of Paragon Prep, a high school in Austin, TX. “Rather than putting a pause on instruction, how marvelous would it be if a teacher could program their own avatar to teach a lesson on a day they have to be out sick or at a conference? A staff member can sit in the room while the avatar plays on the screen.”

Schools can leverage the teacher’s AI-generated lesson on the same subject, while teachers can track and monitor a student’s progress. This gives teachers and the administration more flexibility when missing school days—whether it’s the teacher or a student missing class.

“As long as the teacher can shape the message and is programming the avatar to do their job for them, I think teachers would see this technology not as a threat but as an amazing tool,” explains McGrath.

AI transforms textbooks into interactive study guides.

As Gen Z prefers learning via video platforms like YouTube over reading, it’s clear that textbook publishers need to innovate and evolve in order to help students and teachers. New AI technologies can be used directly by publishers to auto-convert textbooks into engaging video lessons. This could save teachers tremendous time, allowing teachers to edit and personalize lessons for their classes without starting from scratch.  

Students can read while listening and pause or rewatch when needed—making the interactive videos particularly helpful for those struggling with traditional studying forms. These videos benefit teachers who incorporate the “flipped classroom” methodology, which is increasingly popular and promising. With this technology, teachers could also leverage AI-generated avatars in their videos to make the lessons more interesting. For example, teachers could have Pythagoras explain his own theorem in ancient Greece, for example.

AI helps with automatic grading and assessment creation.

Teachers spend between five to seven hours a week grading. This is widely known as the worst part of teaching. AI can eliminate much of this.

With AI tools, grading becomes automatic. And with instant answers, students can better understand the concepts. AI can also reduce the teacher’s time creating questions, as it automatically generates possible learning assessments.

Furthermore, when it comes to subjects like math, AI can quickly adapt to a student’s level, so homework becomes a way to have a deeper understanding of a student’s mastery of a subject. For instance, AI can challenge certain students who need a challenge and slow down for students who need more time understanding the subject. In turn, this generates better insights into the teachers’ understanding of the student’s efforts.

Many fear that computer-generated grading would only perpetuate the education system’s reliance on multiple-choice questions. But with AI, that is simply not the case. When answering basic questions, AI can read a student’s answers. Perhaps it’s not ready to read a 5-paragraph essay on To Kill a Mockingbird, but it will know if a student paid attention when asked who Boo Radley is.

AI could transform tutoring.

A 2017 study found that tutoring is the most effective way to improve learning outcomes among students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. But most teachers, particularly in public schools, don’t have the time for one-on-one instruction with every student.

AI edtech companies like Hypatia are already making this incredible technology a reality. Technologies have tremendous potential to assist with tutoring as well. Will this replace the need for human tutors? Well, as a mother of two rambunctious kids, I think certainly not. After all, it’s widely agreed that lasting relationships are the key to the efficacy of tutoring. The idea that a robot can replace teachers is laughable. But can it be used as a low-cost, highly scalable tutoring supplement? Absolutely.

So, rather than worrying about how AI might replace teachers, the time has come to ask what AI can do for teachers?

Related:
AI’s promising reality in classrooms
AI is the key to scaling personalized, one-on-one instruction

Click Here for Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be an ambiguous word in education circles, evoking images of machines replacing human teachers in the future. The truth, while less fantastic, is that AI is a solid tool that assists educators in the classroom right now.

Join experts during an eSchool News webinar to discuss the real-world ways AI operates and how AI systems enable teachers to better interact with students, simplify everyday classroom tasks, and improve overall efficiency and productivity.

Key takeaways include:

• How current voice-activated AI systems at home, in cars, and on devices can be put to use in classrooms
• How to use voice commands or a remote to control laptops, interactive displays, internet browsers, apps, and more
• How to scale AI pilot projects into true distinct implementations

Click Here for Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

K-12 school systems are facing a “perfect storm” of challenges today. 

The pandemic has put students well behind in their education, with millions of children achieving below grade level in reading and math. The only way to accelerate their learning and get them back on track is to work with each child individually. Yet, at the same time, schools are facing a historic teacher shortage—and third-party tutoring services aren’t able to fill the tremendous need for one-on-one instruction.

Fortunately, there is a solution available that can address this confluence of challenges. Before I describe the solution, however, it’s worth exploring each of these challenges in more detail.

The need for learning recovery

Despite the best efforts of teachers and administrators to maintain instruction during the early stages of the pandemic, millions of students fell behind in the shift to remote learning. A lack of access to digital devices and home broadband access, distractions in learning from home, technical glitches, and unfamiliarity with online teaching and learning best practices are just some of the factors that made remote learning less effective than in-person instruction, especially for students in under-resourced communities.

A study by the Brookings Institution of data from 5.4 million U.S. students in grades 3-8 revealed that reading and math test scores dropped significantly from fall 2019 to fall 2021. In fact, COVID’s effects on math learning were more significant than the effects of Hurricane Katrina’s disruption to learning for New Orleans students. What’s more, the learning gaps between students attending low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by 20 percent in math and 15 percent in reading during this two-year period, Brookings found.

If you’re a teacher or administrator on the front lines of education, this isn’t news. You know just how much your own students need to progress to get back to grade-level achievement—and you know, too, that this won’t happen without significant intervention.

Overburdened teachers

Research suggests that high-dosage, one-on-one tutoring is the most effective strategy for learning recovery. For instance, by working with students individually as they solve math problems, giving them real-time feedback, seeing where they might be making a mistake, and prompting them with the correct step or strategy, educators can accelerate students’ understanding of key math concepts.

However, school systems can’t provide this degree of one-on-one instruction to all students by themselves. Teachers have far too much to do during a typical school day to be able to spend quality time with every student individually. 

Adding more teachers or support staff isn’t a viable option at a time when school systems are already struggling to hire and retain a baseline number of employees. And even if school systems were able to hire enough teachers to give every child the one-on-one attention they need, what happens when the COVID stimulus money runs out? Hiring our way to learning recovery isn’t a sustainable solution.

Shortcomings of traditional tutoring services

Many school systems are looking to third-party tutoring services for help with one-on-one instruction. But as K-12 leaders are learning, finding qualified tutoring providers isn’t easy. 

Research shows that tutoring is most effective when the tutors are certified instructors who work with the same student in a one-on-one setting every day by focusing on skills that are aligned with the district’s specific curriculum. As Education Week reports, finding independent tutoring services that meet these criteria can be challenging.

The solution: An AI-powered tutor that can be customized for each school’s curriculum

School districts need a scalable, sustainable solution for working with each student individually on curriculum-aligned skills. An artificially intelligent tutor that schools can tailor to their own unique curriculum fills this need.

AI-powered bots that use machine learning to become increasingly sophisticated are already widely used to answer consumers’ questions and provide a first line of customer service. Now, with recent advancements in technology from companies like Knomadix, we can scale deployment of bots in K-12 education that are capable of understanding the learning process and interacting with students to provide personalized, one-on-one learning assistance and extend the reach of a teacher.

We can train AI-powered bots with structured information so that they provide guided, step-by-step tutoring to a student, perform micro-assessments at intermediate checkpoints within a lesson, offer real-time contextual feedback to students, capture student work stroke-by-stroke, and provide detailed data sets about student learning gaps. These instructional bots can also give teachers the ability to replay student work stroke-by-stroke, allowing them to gain deeper insights into how students learn and where they went wrong. In the future, these bots will also be able to learn how to respond to emotional cues, so that they might offer encouragement or otherwise meet students’ social and emotional needs as well as their academic ones.

Knomadix has developed a learning platform that combines AI and active learning to deliver personalized instruction and intervention through machine-assisted, one-on-one support. In essence, the technology does what a teacher would do if they had the time to sit next to each student on every assignment.

While using bots for education isn’t new, the Knomadix platform is unique in that it’s fully customizable to a district’s own curriculum and is intended to work with any subject area, unlike other solutions that are built for one specific subject. Knomadix works for any subject that involves a multi-step sequence, such as multiplying fractions or balancing chemical equations. It can provide real-time help with any problem or question a student might be working on, specific to a district’s own curriculum. In this way, school districts can bring the power of AI to whatever topics they want students to master.

At the same time Knomadix is helping students, it’s collecting data on each student’s unique learning needs, so teachers have deeper insight into how to help each child for themselves. 

An artificially intelligent tutor is intended to supplement, not supplant, a district’s teaching staff. With AI, we can extend the reach of every teacher, making it possible to scale personalized learning district-wide—thus improving equity and accelerating learning outcomes. An artificially intelligent tutor is a feasible solution not just for learning recovery, but for closing long-standing achievement gaps once and for all.

Click Here for Everything You Need To Know About AI In Education

Underserved communities are universally disadvantaged in their access to resources and high-quality technical education compared to  their urban counterparts. Data suggests that between 2000 and 2019, the number of college graduates (ages 25-34) in urban America increased from 26 percent to 39 percent, while in rural America, this number increased only by 6 percent(15 percent to 21 percent). This divide can be attributed to the convergence of resources, talent, and opportunities in urban clusters.

A game-changing tool for intervention – one primed to reshape these metrics for rural America, revitalize their economies, and uplift their people – is AI education. Today, the demand for AI adoption is increasing across the world. In fact, AI’s contribution to the global GDP is expected to soar to $15.7 trillion by 2030.

The technology’s applications span a range of business functions and industries, holding the promise of new efficiencies and automation. Therefore, partaking in opportunities that enable skills in the technology is imperative.

High-quality AI education can be monumental in empowering residents of rural and underserved America. Leveraging AI-powered career and business opportunities can greatly improve socio-economic status and address digital and economic divides.

There are distinct steps needed to successfully implement AI education offerings in schools in underserved America in order to yield a talent pool with highly marketable, in-demand skills.

Building the right foundation with effective courses and curriculum

A strong background in STEM is key to embracing AI – both as a career path and as a tool for business transformation. However, resources are scant in rural communities. According to a 2020 report, only 47 percent of high schools in America teach Computer Science courses. In non-urban areas only 43 percent of high schools in rural areas and 41 percent high schools in towns teaching computer science. In suburban and city areas, this number is 57 percent and 44 percent respectively.

These disparities are even wider while comparing some states. Only 19 percent of high schools in Louisiana offered CS courses – of which more were located in the cities – compared to 89 percent in Rhode Island. However, only an adept STEM student is most suited to pick up advanced AI skills. Therefore, it’s important to kindle interest from a child’s early years all the way to K-12, no matter where they live.

As kids begin to explore smartphones, gaming consoles, and household devices, responding to their curiosities with engaging explanations can help  mold their interests into passion. Providing the option to pursue academic courses in pertinent topics such as Python, data analytics, and advanced mathematics can refine students’ skills and help them gain significant exposure in the discipline. According to the 2021 AI Index Report, there is already an uptick in AI-related courses in universities, with an increase of 102.9 percent in the undergraduate level and 41.7 percent in the graduate level within the last four years.

Students can also tap into creative elements such as programming music or interacting with AI powered robots for a more comprehensive and enjoyable learning experience. 

For a more well-rounded pedagogy, there should be provisions for after-school clubs and team activities centering around AI applications. No matter their level of expertise on AI, all teachers should be trained to be cognizant of the latest developments and have sound proficiency to implement AI for tasks to improve efficiency with regards to automating administrative tasks. They should also have mastered creative strategies to teach. After all, better instructors inspire students to cultivate and nurture interest.

To enable this, stakeholders including school board members, policymakers, and educators need to collectively assess the needs of an institutions’ teachers and students. This assessment should take into consideration infrastructural resources, such as well-equipped computer labs, to allow the formulation of an executable plan specific to the institution’s needs.

Entering into strategic partnerships

For decisionmakers and citizens in underserved markets to develop confidence in AI, they need to first become aware of the possibilities AI has unlocked in various industries. From assessing risk and information in banking to monitoring crop and soil in agriculture, no industry has sequestered itself away from AI. Communicating this idea to stakeholders requires strategic partnerships.

The key stakeholders to help forward AI adoption are educational institutions, corporations, and government bodies. As a result, collaboration among all three is key. This enables an ecosystem with a vigorous infrastructure and sponsorship opportunities, while creating a nurturing environment for AI talent. Members of the community are then poised to take up these rewarding careers and subsequently uplift their communities.

Often, avenues such as expos, internships, career fairs, workshops, and knowledge-sharing sessions are effective in bringing together strategic collaborators. Local businesses play a big role in advancing AI awareness and career prospects within their communities. Similarly, local governments also have a responsibility to understand the potential of AI and improve citizens’ well-being and provide incentives for local businesses to adopt AI. The City of Las Vegas, Nevada has utilized AI for its autonomous vehicle initiative and has incorporated other technological innovations to improve city operations, while companies like Lyft ran trials and Audi received data from the city.

If the goal is to revive economies, communities need to be on similar trajectories to digitally inclined cities elsewhere and attract AI innovation in underserved areas and generate life-changing employment opportunities. Local decisionmakers need to ensure all groups of people in their communities have equitable access to reliable technologies. Governments need to put in place programs that facilitate production, engagement, and retention of talent. This all converges towards a robust AI ecosystem driven by strong AI education programs. Alignment can be achieved between education institutes and local governments through adequate budget allocations, grants, and localized AI courses.

Empowering the future leaders of AI

People should be able to gain skills and experience, no matter their place of residence. With high-quality AI education, students can improve their lives and become globally competent in a business world that is increasingly facilitated by technology. This way, the socio-economic marginalization faced by rural communities can be ameliorated and our collective future can become more equitable.

To intervene successfully, a needs assessment of the educational landscape is pivotal. Getting insights from educators and students as to why AI programs have not engaged enough students can be highly beneficial to planning strategy. Educational departments and school superintendents can also be valuable to pointing out gaps in the AI education infrastructure and to help assess what resources can help bridge that.

For effective AI education deployment, all state governments should have thorough AI education plans and benchmarks education institutions must meet. Teachers should be adequately skilled to teach AI subjects. Institutions should also be constantly in touch with local business partners and create specific industry catered courses whose graduates local businesses can hire. To nurture engagement, institutions should strategically organize fairs and present students networking opportunities with officials from big companies who are constantly looking for new talent in a range of roles.

Conclusion

All of the above steps can be implemented to create an equitable and innovative future. AI integration is inevitable in every sphere of our society. The success of the interventions mentioned above is contingent on the implementations made.

All in all, these are important measures to a comprehensive AI rollout and strategies that stakeholders, particularly education institutions, can leverage to be important change makers in today’s fast-paced digital world. AI education still can offset the inequalities that have come to be, and it is a must that all sections of society give serious thought to tap into its benefits to undo socio-economic marginalization of underserved communities.

Immersive learning experiences are a new type of educational experience that can be used in place of traditional lectures and classrooms. Immersive learning is meant to mimic the real world by providing students with an environment that is as close to reality as possible. It’s designed for learners who are interested in hands-on experiences, problem-solving, and discovery over non-traditional methods like reading textbooks and listening to lectures from a professor.

There are also many potential applications of immersive learning techniques in schools. This article will discuss what immersive learning is, how it changes the classroom experience, and some current use cases of immersive learning.

What is immersive learning? 

Immersive learning provides realistic settings in which students can participate in situations and simulations. Immersive environments are created with artificial stimuli such as sounds and images that make users feel physically present in the virtual world. Let’s look at some of the most common types of technology involved in immersive learning techniques:

Augmented reality augments real-world surroundings into a user’s device and enhances reality by incorporating digital features.

Virtual reality creates digital simulations in a headset, allowing users to be fully immersed in a virtual environment.

Mixed reality blends AR and VR to make virtual interactions seem more lifelike. MR enables digital and physical objects to coexist and interact in real-time.

3D immersive learning is a method that encourages extensive learning by using 3D visuals and simulations to give users an immersive experience.

How immersive learning changes the classroom

Immersive learning covers a wide range of topics. For example, it teaches people how to operate a forklift and other heavy machinery, control airplanes in flight simulators, and resolve conflicts in an office setting. Immersive technologies enable learning in nearly any scenario, which is one of the major benefits. There are several other benefits of immersive learning methods, but here are just a few:

Better knowledge retention: With immersive learning techniques, information is usually better retained than when learning with traditional methods. VR is in the top two with learning retention of 75 percent, according to a 2020 study. While lectures have learning retention of just 5 percent, and reading has learning retention of 10 percent, VR training is only surpassed by learning that occurs via teaching others, where learning retention exceeds 90 percent.

Increased motivation: Immersive learning experiences make education generally more enjoyable. With immersive learning technologies, educators can create exciting ways to deliver information. According to a 2019 study, this type of information delivery creates positive experiences that lead to higher motivation and willingness to learn and participate in educational activities.

Distraction-free world: Being immersed in a virtual world makes it easy for learners to tune out distractions. As mentioned earlier, immersive learning experiences create interesting scenarios that are usually fun and motivating for the user, so it’s easy to ignore the usual distractions that cause minds to stray from the learning material.

How immersive learning is currently being implemented

Immersive learning can be used in almost any scenario. Here are some notable ways that immersive learning is currently being utilized:

Virtual field trips: Geographic location, safety, and budgetary constraints prevent specific environments and concepts from being explored with a field trip. However, the capacity to do so with VR opens up a whole new world of learning opportunities. Field trips can help students comprehend complex topics.

Vocational and life-skill training: Certify-ED is an online school that provides VR courses that allow users to receive training in certain career paths such as welding, nursing, culinary arts, drone flying, and many other topics. They also provide courses to train life skills such as laundry, scheduling, and more.

Astronomy courses: Some disciplines, like astronomy, are difficult to understand since the material is abstract. However, VR, AR, and other forms of immersive learning can help students better understand abstract and dynamic topics.

History lessons: Immersive learning allows students to learn about historical events and places throughout the globe. Teachers can plan lessons that take students back in time to learn more about historical subjects.

Education for students with special needs: One example near to my heart is The Dan Marino Foundation. The DMF has a VR program that mimics a job interview for its students who have autism or other developmental disabilities. The ability to practice with an avatar provides them with more confidence in their communication and interviewing skills.

The future of education

Immersive learning is a fantastic method for individuals of all ages and experience levels to acquire new skills. Immersive technologies are becoming more prevalent due to technological advancements such as cheaper VR equipment and improved mobile technology.

These developments enable instructors to harness the power of immersive learning and learners to study without boundaries and reach their full potential. Immersive learning can significantly enhance learning effect and engagement, and it makes for a great learning experience.