Although we're still unpacking what kinds of impacts generative AI will have on education, we are starting to get a handle on it. Generative AI is available, easy to access, easy to use, and a powerful tool when used correctly. Students and educators alike are already using it and making an impact on their learning and teaching. It promises benefits like enhanced personalized learning, accelerated curriculum development, and real-time feedback; but it can also support drawbacks like cheating, plagiarism, and serving as a crutch to bypass critical thinking. The task to ensure we maximize its potential to elevate learning and minimize the potential to undermine it is one of the key challenges we face as educators.
This section outlines some examples of generative AI use in education, highlights pros and cons, and then considers its use from the perspective of a teacher and a student. Let's start with some examples of how generative AI can be used in education:
Generative AI can create tailored learning materials based on individual students' learning styles, preferences and performance, enhancing personalized education.
Educators can use generative AI to develop a wide array of content from textbooks to interactive modules. These AI systems can create content that is aligned with the curriculum, updated in real-time, and customized to cater to a diverse student population.
An AI chatbot can act as a virtual tutor/mentor/coach presenting content, checking for understanding, and providing prompts and coaching to support learning. Ethan and Lilach Mollick have created and tested a few comprehensive prompts that work reasonably well in ChatGPT (GPT-4) and Microsoft Copilot, but they are not quite as capable as you would hope. It is likely that an LLM used as a tutor would have to be specially trained to act as a good tutor. Khan Academy (Khanmigo), Google (Learn About) and others are working on such things, but their effectiveness is not yet proven.
If students are coached on effective and ethical use of generative AI, teachers can potentially set their quality expectations higher. For example, Ethan Mollick requires his entrepreneurship student to do at least one impossible task in their projects. Basically, what he means by this is that generative AI can help you code, create a website, design an app without you needing to know how to do that.
Generative AI is capable of providing immediate feedback on your writing, your coding, and even on your ideas..
AI can instantly translate educational content (student or teacher generated) from and to many languages. General purpose chatbots are pretty good at this and specialized translators are even better.
The integration of AI in education brings both significant opportunities and notable challenges. Understanding this balance is key to harnessing AI's potential responsibly and effectively in learning environments.
I came across an interesting comment from a student on a podcast by CBC's The Current about using generative AI like ChatGPT in education. This student was very motivated to learn but found some courses irrelevant. Due to a heavy course load, they focused on the courses they felt most relevant and used ChatGPT for the rest. Many students feel the same, especially when overwhelmed with work, and turn to ChatGPT for help. Cases like this show the willingness of students to use generative AI to cheat, but students also seem to understand the risks of doing so which they identified as not just academic penalties but also the learning they miss out on.
A survey by Cecilia Chan and Wenjie Hu of 339 students across six Hong Kong universities revealed that students find GenAI useful for:
The same study highlighted significant student concerns regarding the use of GenAI in education:
These concerns are echoed by students globally, as discussed in forums like the AIxEducation conference. Students worldwide are grappling with a new set of critical questions:
The AI tide is rolling in, with or without an invitation. Students are savvy; they see the potential of AI as both a powerful tool and a complex challenge. They are ready to engage, albeit with understandable trepidation about the evolving rules of this new academic landscape.
Educators, too, find themselves in a delicate balancing act. They are tasked with a dual mandate: to deter the misuse of AI while simultaneously championing its educational benefits. As they navigate this complex terrain, the core challenge is to ensure that the fundamental essence of education—critical thinking, creativity, and genuine understanding—isn't lost amidst the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence.
When ChatGPT was first released in November 2022, many teachers had a moment of panic and thought that either "this is the end of education as we know it " or "this is the end of education as we know it ". Proponents like Ethan Mollick fully embraced ChatGPT and sought the best ways to use it in his classes. At the same time, school districts like the one in New York City banned ChatGPT outright because they didn't know how to deal with it at the time. Ethan Mollick's level of adoption is beyond what most of us know how to do and NYC school's reaction was an excessive knee-jerk reaction to the new technology that has since been reversed. Now that the initial reactions are behind us, many educators have put a lot of thought into how to best make use of LLMs like ChatGPT to support the education of our students. Institutes have added AI to their academic policies and most of these that I have read are permissive and generally put the choice of if and how to allow its use in the hands of the teachers and professors. Institutes have also released guidelines on how educators might use AI in their classes along with suggestions on how to adapt assignments to support its use.
It's clear that most teachers are going to need to change their practices somewhat, but the amount of change will vary from level to level and from topic to topic. Primary school teachers have likely changed their approach very little and instructors teaching exclusively hands-on topics probably haven't changed much either. On the other hand first year English and computer science professors have likely had to change their approach a lot - these are courses for which ChatGPT can probably help the most (write an essay, write some simple code), and first year courses (especially ones that students only take because they have to) are the courses in which students are most likely to look for outside "help". The value of the AI output for courses like this is high and so is the incentive.
Most educators are finding a middle ground between full adoption and complete rejection, adapting their teaching methods thoughtfully rather than radically. The key is to focus on what matters most: developing students' critical thinking, creativity, and ability to evaluate information. In many ways, AI is pushing us to do what good teachers have always done - move beyond rote learning to deeper understanding. The challenge now isn't just teaching subject matter, but teaching students how to learn and think in a world where AI is a constant companion.
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