Educators and students explore evolving role of AI in modern learning

Published September 5, 2024,

BY ZANA BALABAN

Nearly two years after the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT was released to the public in November 2022, Carmel High School begins to pass the infant stages of understanding the technology and how it can be utilized to support student learning by providing cited information, tutoring on-demand and streamlining administrative tasks.

Campus educators say an initial concern was academic dishonesty. Because devices such as ChatGPT, Khanmigo and My AI draw information from across the Internet to create original responses, questions arose about the leaps education would need to take in order to modernize and stay ahead of this newly accessible and highly developed form of plagiarism.

“As a history teacher, we look at history in bands of thousands of years,” says World History teacher Bruce Dini. “In terms of the pace of change that’s happening with AI, we’re talking about thousands of days.”

According to Dini, education first developed in the late 1800s, during the Industrial Revolution, to train factory workers in basic skills. Fast-forward to today, society has rapidly reached the post-industrial age.

“Tech companies are way ahead of education, and they always have been,” says Jason Maas-Baldwin, the AP Chemistry and AP Environmental Science teacher at CHS. Maas-Baldwin makes an analogy when he explains that while many teenagers were carrying cell phones by the early 2000s, it is only now that many California school districts are enforcing bans.

In terms of change, legislation has remained the same since AI’s launch. While the Biden-Harris administration published the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights in October 2022, because most intelligence companies draft and fund their technology privately, it is difficult for lawmakers to pass regulations for the public. So, for the time being, the U.S. government has neither binding authority nor laws over the development and use of AI.

As technology continues to work toward finding its place in the classroom, society has the freedom to explore its unique capabilities and the opportunity to use it to advance their learning experience.

“It can be a gateway and an inspiration for students,” says art teacher Steven Russell. “I just see it as another tool that we’ve only scratched the surface of. Is it frightening? Yes. But with anything in automation, there’s still room for us as humans to be creators.”

By complementing and enhancing human creativity rather than replacing it, ChatGPT itself says AI systems can offer real-time feedback on students’ work, helping them understand their mistakes and learn from them immediately. It can also recommend courses and learning paths that help individuals explore new fields and develop creative skills, while making high-quality educational resources more accessible to students and teachers worldwide.

While they acknowledge the danger of forming an overdependence on this technology, educators like Dini and Maas-Baldwin even incentivize students to get the most out of the software by using it as a learning tool to clarify difficult concepts and act as a tutor.

“The question is, how can we embrace [AI]?” says Dini, who is now developing lesson plans that involve students orally presenting a prompt answered by ChatGPT without notes or flashcards, thus being forced to fully understand, defend sources and respond to follow-up questions about the topic. But Dini admits, “Education is usually the last to change.”

In addition to student use, teachers can use artificial intelligence to their advantage to automate administrative tasks such as grading and scheduling. Through his personal exploration, Dini has found the technology to be advanced enough that it will respond with follow-up questions about State Board of Education requirements and class textbook publishers to form comprehensive and site-specific lesson plans.

AP Biology instructor Kevin Buran has spent time surveying the capabilities of AI and has now begun employing it to create analogies for abstract concepts and draft multiple-choice test questions.

“I really jumped in the deep end in fall last year,” Buran says. “I very clearly vet what [AI] feeds me, and if I don’t like it, then I ask ChatGPT or whatever device I’m using to adjust so it’s more appropriate for the age group and skill level.”

While educational institutions navigate the evolving landscape shaped by artificial intelligence, and legislative frameworks have yet to catch up, the space left behind allows for both creativity and uncertainty in how AI is applied to teaching and learning.