Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly expanding its vast impact in modern society, and in many ways, influencing our educational system. From brainstorming ideas to explaining complex ideas, AI can be a useful tool for students and teachers.
“When I use AI, I do so responsibly, I make sure I check everything, most of the time AI gets me halfway to where I want an assignment and then I have to do the rest of the work. I would never use AI as an assessment tool, like, if I am actually assessing a student’s writing or speaking or listening, I have to make sure that comes from my expertise,” said an anonymous teacher.
A recent survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics shows that 37.6% of the Gen Z population and roughly 25% of teachers use AI for learning. In comparison to other age groups, AI is the most prominent among the Gen Z population, and researchers are expecting AI to continually integrate itself into the path of education in correlation to AI’s rapid developments.
“I use AI to reformat the Lexile and scale it down and then I can still teach those big ideas that I want to teach at a reading level that’s more appropriate for them,” said an anonymous teacher.
Students may utilize AI tools to help them study or understand a difficult subject. AI is able to give them practice questions, summarize or simplify a concept, or even give the feedback on an assignment, and all students have to do is type their request into an AI chatbot. Not only does it provide them with helpful resources, but it does so efficiently and effectively.
“I only use AI when I feel like I’m using it to study and it’s actually going to help me recall knowledge in order to prepare for something,” said Brooklyn Christenson (11).
As for teachers, AI may be seen on occasion to help guide or structure their lessons, but is generally integrating itself at a slower rate compared to students. AI can give them a starting point to build their curriculum, centralize main ideas, or create guided questions or small quizzes so students can use it to study and fully grasp the concepts. Ultimately their goal is to develop their students’ intellectual growth and enhance their learning experience.
“She (her English teacher) would use it to help us understand books more, which is actually helpful and create visuals with it which I thought was really cool,” said Christenson.
Along with the benefits of AI, many are concerned about its facilities being overused. Though these possibilities exist, students and teachers have found their own way to regulate their personal use of AI, along with navigating the dangers of relying on it. It’s important for students to only use AI as a helpful study tool to ensure they are truly understanding and contextualizing the content.
A teacher’s primary goal is to expand and develop students’ knowledge to meet their standards and expectations, and AI can make this job more effective. On the other hand, they also prioritize using their expertise as credentialed teachers since teaching is ultimately relationship based, which prevents an AI from overtaking the classroom and students’ learning experience.
“At the end of the day, I’m the educator in the room, I need to make sure that my scaffolds I’m giving or my guiding questions or feedback or even the assessments I’m creating are valid. They have a fidelity to them that actually represents our standards and helps students learn,” said an anonymous teacher.
As the educational system develops with AI, it may be better to adapt to these changing times sooner than later, especially since its presence is undoubtedly increasing. The possibilities of AI are endless, and as we learn and utilize its developments, the more we can expect to see it shape our society.
