While much of the buzz around artificial intelligence use in education has focused on potential student misuse, a different issue has occupied Dr. Teri J. Langlie, chair and associate professor of education at Concordia College. How can teachers ethically use AI in the classroom to help their students learn?
That’s the question behind Langlie’s latest Special Topics in Education class, EDUC 624, part of the coursework required for students earning a Master of Education in Teaching and Learning degree.
“We can’t ignore AI as teachers. We don’t have to buy into it and embrace it 100%, but we are preparing students who are going to live in a world with AI,” Langlie said. “We can’t ignore that.”
Though Introduction to AI in Education is a new special topic graduate-level class, Langlie has already taught it a few times, typically to small classes of students who are all K-12 teachers themselves.
Those students begin the course with very different levels of experience with AI, as well as very different opinions about its usefulness, ethical status, and potential impacts on kids. Some have refused to allow AI in the classroom at all, and others have already begun using AI themselves to plan lessons and meet some student needs.
Langlie begins by examining what AI actually is, tracing its history from decades past through the rapid and revolutionary technological leaps of the past few years. Her students also learn about some of the theory behind AI, like machine learning, natural language processing, and data analytics — all with an emphasis on what that could mean for their own students in terms of personalized learning, meaningful assessments, and instructional design.
Each class period, students are shown a new tech tool that uses AI and explore that tool in depth, learning how to use it and discussing the ethics involved, considering different scenarios and situations that could potentially pop up in a real-life classroom.
AI tools can be used for all kinds of purposes, such as addressing various types of diversity in the classroom, Langlie explained. AI tools can be used to support students who are exceptional learners and already succeeding but who have the potential to go further. They can also be used to help students who need extra support to become as successful as their peers.
Even an application like Canva, an AI design product, can help teachers customize their classroom materials for different classes. Other applications can alter the grade level, readability, or tone of text or shorten it to fit a specific space. Teachers can find different ways of creating lesson plans, finding new ideas, planning conferences, and writing report card notes.
“Their final assignment is that they need to plan a lesson or a unit where AI is embedded within it meaningfully, appropriately, and ethically — all the things that would benefit their students,” Langlie said. “And my hope is that they will find something that will entice them to use it moving forward.”
Typically, by the end of the course, some of her students have become AI enthusiasts, and others don’t — but they do find something they want to use.
“And that’s fine, and we do that. Everybody’s comfortable in a different way,” Langlie said.
She compared AI to other technologies that have changed the classroom, such as calculators and the internet, and noted that the world is constantly changing too.
“There is a place for AI in education, and I think that it is incumbent on all teachers to address it because it’s not going away and their students need to know how to live in a world with AI,” Langlie added. “They absolutely have to know the ethical, appropriate, meaningful use of it. And we can’t close our eyes just because we’re uncomfortable.”
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