This has been my favourite module so far! Having graduated in December of 2022, AI has been an asset and obstacle in my career. Comically, I began teaching when OpenAI first released open access to ChatGPT, which is often met with gasps from my colleagues. I related a lot to Heilweil’s (2022) article which truly incapacitated the advancements in this new era. I have experimented and worked with AI in many aspects of my course planning, material, activities, feedback, and support tasks. Before you denounce me and stop reading, let me explain to you how I interact with AI and use it as an accelerating tool as a new educator. Moreover, I also teach my own students how to interact with AI appropriately to also accelerate their learning.
I deliberately used the word ‘interact’ because that’s exactly how communication needs to work when using AI. By feeding it key and relevant information, questioning its responses and reliability of sources, and guiding the conversation and contents, you are able to learn, create, and develop at a significantly faster pace. As someone who believes in the potential of AI, I am probably the most skeptical of the information it feeds me which arguably makes me verify and judge the quality of sources more thoroughly. For example, I use it to help me narrow down key topics in a unit, analyze ELL student speaking and pronunciation development (Microsoft, 2025), create topic relevant questions on .csv files for Blooket and Kahoot, use it to write more personalized and specific feedback on student work, and learn content quickly to support ELL students in their academic classes. It is my assistant as I develop and improve my teaching material and cross-curricular knowledge. I use my approach to share strategies and skills to interact with AI to improve learning and communicate understanding in an academic setting. Like an educational tool (ex: textbook, pencil, world wide web), students need to learn how to use it and what it can offer.
I start with an introduction activity to show students how important their prompts can shape the relativity, accuracy, and quality of responses they receive. They need to document their prompts and responses. Usually, I do this as a written activity, but I thought I’d adapt it to be an image for this task.
Below are the steps I have for them with an explanation on my reasoning to include it.
- Step 1: Verify with Your Teacher
- This is the first step because I do not want them to believe that every situation is appropriate with AI and that all educators have different perspectives and comfort levels with AI use. If they are using it to complete work, there needs to be confirmation that its use is necessary for the task. The texts and worksheets may also have been created by their teacher and connect that to intellectual property and privacy concerns.
- Step 2: Your Information
- Here I discuss with them the importance of feeding it detailed, precise and relevant information. I compare the introduction activity to this point and discuss how giving it your own sources of information, such as grade level, course subject, texts/materials, and rubrics, can give it parameters and narrow the focus. I use an example of asking AI to explain DNA both with and without key information to show them the difference.
- Step 3: Its Information
- We talk about this topic in both a broad view and a more narrow view. Broadly, it scrapes through its corpus, which is usually websites, articles, and other information shared with the model to find connections to your prompt. I spend a lot of time on this part because I think it’s important that they understand where AI finds its information and how this can be biased. We talk about how AI can manipulate its information to confirm the underlying bias of the prompt and information that they provide, the data in the most frequently visited sites, and the algorithm itself. I really like Dr Vallor’s metaphor of AI bias and a mirror which I think I might edit my slides to include as an example for my future classes (Santa Clara University, 2018).
- Step 4: Delusions and Accuracy
- This is where we talk about the importance of checking our sources, requesting specific types of sources, and reviewing the links to verify its accuracy.
- Step 5: Questions and Prompting
- I start off by saying “If you are copying an answer after 1-3 responses, then you are not using it to your advantage”. In my opinion, the most underlooked strength of AI for our learners is the power of asking strong, critical, and relevant questions and prompts. Their interaction through questions and prompts can help them develop problem solving skills and extend their learning beyond just topics spoken within the classroom setting. The more they question and prompt, the more the information will reflect their needs, ideas, and understanding.
- Step 6: Your Ideas, AI’s Advice
- The fine line between ‘AI garbage’ and AI supported work is how and what they do with the information AI provides them with. My biggest push for this section is that they should never be coping and pasting from AI to an assignment. It should be used to help clarify their ideas, talk them through steps, and help them brainstorm. I provide examples comparing prompts that use the students’ ideas with AI ideas. Additionally, I mention the need for students to develop their own writing style, voice, and ability to communicate their own ideas. With AI creating its own sociolinguistic dialect, I close this point about choosing vocabulary appropriately; if they don’t know what it means, they probably should use a word they are more comfortable with.
- Step 7: Save Your Chat History for Evidence
-
- I end on this point because I want them to be able to defend their work in the ever evolving dynamic between institutions and education with their tolerance of AI. Having a record of their interaction and use can protect them from accusations of plagiarism and misuse.
At the end, I have them reflect on some critical thinking questions regarding AI:
- What do you think AIs strengths are? Give some examples of how they relate to your experiences with it?
- This shows me their learning from this activity and their ability to connect their personal experiences and interactions with AI. It will provide me with insight on what they took from the situational appropriateness of AI in an academic setting.
- What do you think AI weaknesses are? Give some examples of how you need to use your own intelligence.
- This shows me their learning from this activity and their ability to evaluate and judge the accuracy and boundaries of AI. Ideally, they will reflect on when they need to be mindful of the responses.
- How could AI rewrite history? How does this relate to bias?
- I include this because I want them to think critically about the risks of AI and how it pertains to ethics. When we go over these questions, I talk about the storage of information and how it is used and accessed. I use the game ‘telephone’ as an analogy of how information and facts can be changed and manipulated over time. I connect to some of the ideas that were mentioned by Talks at Google (2016) about how those who control GPTs and its algorithms can influence history knowingly and unknowingly
Though, it has made me reflect on how the environment of education is changing, especially in terms of assessment. Personally, I struggle to assign any projects or take-home assessments as I am always met with what I refer to as ‘AI garbage’. Although I spend time talking about the appropriateness of using AI in an academic setting, some students still submit work that does not reflect their own understanding, which of course is inevitable. I’d like to, however, also bring up the importance of education evolving with AI. Now that AI is able to accelerate learning by accessing specific information and data, maybe learning needs to accelerate its shift from focusing on standardized memorization and perhaps to critical thinking, problem solving, and cognitive skills.
References:
Heilweil, R. (2022). AI is finally good at stuff. Now what? Vox. https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/7/23498694/ai-artificial-intelligence-chat-gpt-openai
Microsoft. (2025). Getting started with Reading Progress in Teams. Microsoft Support. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/getting-started-with-reading-progress-in-teams-7617c11c-d685-4cb7-8b75-3917b297c407#id0edd=educators
Santa Clara University. (2018). Lessons from the AI Mirror Shannon Vallor. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/40UbpSoYN4k?si=P9BGPpijWBBlqQvQ
Talks at Google. (2016). Weapons of math destruction | Cathy O’Neil | Talks at Google. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/TQHs8SA1qpk
