Disclaimer: This is my own post, as much as it can be my own today. I am purposefully not generating or editing it with the help of AI (ChatGPT in my case), as I want to remain free of its overt intervention, even if it would have improved the clarity of my message or its grammar and saved my time. I consciously decided to forgo ChatGPT’s help this time around even if this will require me to struggle to express my thinking. I think, I will benefit from this struggle this time. The only thing I will do is use ChatGPT generated image of me leading a Pro-D workshop for teachers:
I am genuinely interested in this novel technology – Artificial Intelligence (AI) – and its effects on our daily lives, teaching and learning. For example, I understand that WordPress has AI-powered grammar tools that highlight obvious typos and mistakes I am making when writing this post. I appreciate that help, but this is not the level of AI I am currently thinking about. I am thinking of the LLM-based AI, such as ChatGPT that is changing my thinking about intelligence and what AI-based tutoring systems can do to support learning.
I use AI daily in all aspects of my life: from ordering stuff at Amazon, deciding what movie I want to watch tonight, deciding on the next recipe I am going to try out, getting suggestions on Duolingo while doing my daily language practice, or deciding what paper I am going to read next or how I will organize my course syllabi. I also use AI when reading books and clarifying new or unclear words. Having ChatGPT by my side is extremely helpful. At the same time, I have to be aware that every time I turn to AI to do a task for me, it means that I loose as opportunity to practice it myself. Very often, the tasks are not worth practicing and I gladly forgo them. But what if I become intellectually lazy and my ability to think for myself will start deteriorating?
I am becoming more and more aware of generative AI’s effects on my own thinking, learning, and teaching. I realize that it is extremely easy today to generate lesson plans, visuals, presentation ideas. Yet, as a teacher I know, that in order to teach a good lesson, I have to know much more than I am going to teach and just retelling the textbook is not an effective teaching method. It is also extremely easy for the students to ask AI to do their homework or cheat on assignments. It is much cheaper and easier than asking a tutor to solve their homework for them. So, while AI has unimaginable possibilities for education, it also presents formidable philosophical and ethical challenges. These unlimited opportunities and challenges require us to slow down and rethink what education means in the 21st century. However, the speed at which AI has been improving and spreading around the world has taken me, and I think many of us, by surprise. As a result, we often do not make the time to slow down and think about what is happening.
This is the reason why for the last few months, I immersed myself in reading books about AI, watching videos by the researchers and educators who think about AI and its impact on education in general and STEM education in particular. So far, I do not have a lot of answers, but I do have new questions (at least they are new for me). I am going to try and figure them out at least for myself and my students.
My biggest questions today are not how to use AI in education or how to assess student learning, but:
- What skills and knowledge should we teach considering the students will have access to AI at unprecedented levels?
- How do we motivate students to learn and see value in learning, as opposed to passing evaluation and jumping the hoops of the educational system?
Why many school districts are trying to ban AI, it is clear that the students will access it either in class or at home. In my view, we have to try and think about the role of AI in education at a much deeper level than banning it and imagining that everything will continue as usual. I doubt it will. I do not think that AI revolution is similar to what happened when radio, TVs, or computers became wide spread.
The reason for that, in my opinion, is that AI can produce personalized learning for the students that was unimaginable before. Considering the diversity of our classrooms, this is going to become even more relevant. We will have amazing new tools to support personalized learning (e.g., KhanMigo, Duolingo, ChatGPT), but we will need to decide what we want students to learn and how we can motivate them to learn it. Finally, we will need to rethink how we are going to assess student learning outcomes. The assessment will need to change to reflect the new learning goals and outcomes. Most importantly, the role of teachers will need to change and this means that we have to rethink teacher education. I think it is especially relevant for STEM education. I also think this is the area where we will encounter the most resistance.
This brings me back to my earlier days of my Ph.D. studies at the University of TX at Austin when I was lucky enough to get to know Prof. Marilla D. Svinicki, who fortunately for me became my doctoral supervisor. Prof. Svinicki is a psychologist, who has been studying learning and how to motivate students to learn for most of her academic career. She showed me that intrinsic motivation and interest in learning are some of the most powerful drivers of education. The role of a teacher is to help students find this motivation to learn and be there for the student to help them along their learning journey. This is what I believe will be even more important today – to spark students’ desire to learn and their ownership of learning. The issue of ownership of learning was the focus of my doctoral dissertation more than two decades ago, and it is as relevant today as it was then.
Helping students be motivated and take charge of their learning has always been difficult. It is especially challenging in the era of generative AI is, as it will challenge many of our century-old assumptions about education. For example, we have decided what skills and knowledge students have to acquire and master to graduate high school. We have decided what subjects should be included in our K-12 curricula. We have have decided what tools students should or should not use in school or at home. We have made important decisions on teacher education and certification, as well as the amount of time, our students should spend in public schools. Some of these decisions have undergone significant transformations in the last century, such as teacher certification processes, the use of educational tools (e.g., slide rules, calculators, computers), the inclusions of various subjects (e.g., Latin, foreign languages, machine shop courses, home economics), while others remain set in stone. I think the AI-revolution (and I am not using the word “revolution” lightly) will make a big impact on these decisions. These are the issues I will be thinking about in the context of STEM education and teacher education. I think these are the issues that many educators are already facing or will be facing in the near future. We are running out of time, as it is clear that AI is not coming, it is already here. So, we have no choice but to slow down and consider these issues carefully. Ignoring them will be a big mistake that we cannot afford.
My presentation on AI in education: AI’s Not Coming—It’s Here
AI and Education books and videos I found interesting and worth my time (it is just the beginning):
- Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI” by Ethan Mollick
- Brave New Worlds: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and why that’s a good thing), by Salman Khan.
- Teaching with AI: A practical guide to a new era of human learning, by Jose Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson.
- Derek Muller’s presentation on AI in Education:
To be continued…