AI Gotta Tell You Sumn’

Pros of AI in the Teaching Profession

• Personalized Learning

AI has skilled tools that can create individualized lessons and courses of study for our students that will meet their academic needs in areas they’re lacking/need improvement in. Teachers may not always be able to detect or have the time to address the gaps where our students are struggling in achieving academic objectives, and at times, our students who do comprehend certain subject matters may just desire additional assistance with mastering the content to where they personally feel more proficient. With AI, our students can more conveniently be catered to and receive the help they need through various technological platforms.

• Task Automation

AI has a vast range of features and capabilities that can generate tasks such as the creation of assessments and worksheets inspired by data and criteria the teacher puts in. AI also has tools and systems that can understand human speech (i.e., voice recognition) that can perform tasks such as automated email responses and speech to text abilities for writing essays.

• Grading Assistance

AI has grading tools that teachers can utilize for low stakes testing that will in turn reprieve them from having to find time to grade on their own. Platforms such as “Smodin” or “EssayGrader” are available for teachers to submit their testing materials (questions and answers) to upon which these grading assistants will check for accurate and comprehensive answers in addition to giving efficient, high-quality feedback for students to then use for improvement.

• Lesson Plan Creation

By simply putting in a list of objectives or even a topic, AI can create thorough lesson plans for teachers that may be struggling to figure out the most effective way to teach certain skills or even what to teach at all for the day. Of course, it is up to the teacher of whether they choose to use the lessons provided but this resource is an asset to time-efficiency being that creating lesson plans can be a time-consuming chore.

Cons of AI in the Teaching Profession

• Student Convenience and Dependability

As creative and resourceful AI can be, educators fear our student’s manipulation of the tools as we can predict improper usage or dependency on its assets for homework completion or essay writing. Because AI does have task automation and can write papers, solve math equations, generate graphics and more, we don’t want AI to become too much of a convenience tool for them, allowing them to become lazy or dismiss the importance of student voice and human interaction. Students can easily over rely on technology within their academics which takes away from students’ autonomy and ownership over one’s education.

• Potential Bias

Algorithm bias is a potential when using AI in the classroom because of the prejudices these systems could have ingrained in them upon their creation. When AI is performing tasks such as grading papers or creating personalized lessons, it could form assumptions and produce partial results that derive from AI machine software. Certain AI programming may not be trained on a collection of data that represents/acknowledges underprivileged, marginalized voices and communities which could present negative barriers to our students (i.e., acceptance into schools or detecting cultural dialects in written pieces).

• Limitation of Face-to-Face Engagement

If we allow our students to engage in AI’s resources too often, we eliminate the power of student interaction and face-to-face engagement. Our students thrive off working together and having the ability to problem solve in groups, ask for help from their peers, receive valuable information from their teachers, and more. Student engagement also aids in the building of classroom community which further creates a safe environment our students feel comfortable growing and being successful in, which A.I cannot do as effectively.

• Lack of Empathy

Because AI is technologically based, its ability to access and exude emotions is slim to none. AI being incapable of building interpersonal skills and understanding empathy is not the most beneficial thing when it comes to our students because one of our main priorities as educators is to have meaningful relationships with our children, so they feel they matter and are recognized for who they are outside of being a student.

AI Tool in Lesson Planning

• Task and Tool

This week, my students at the Boys and Girls Club began writing their essays for our “Youth of the Year” program that teaches them to become responsible agents of change in their communities. This program pushes them to be creative and critical in finding resources that will promote, and advocate for diversity, economic, and academic initiatives in their communities, just to name a few.

Their essay writing prompt this week was to speak to what their time as members of the club has been like and how their membership has changed/shaped their lives. In addition to my personal feedback, I decided to use the Student Feedback AI tool, “Turnitin”, as another means of advice and suggestions from someone outside of myself. I wanted them to receive an additional perspective and viewpoint, one from me and one technologically based, so that they could see the similarities and differences in feedback and decide if they liked using “Turnitin” as an essay-writing resource. “Turnitin” not only detects plagiarism, but I programmed it to seek formatting, spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors as well. I wasn’t concerned with its originality checking tool because the students were speaking on their personal experiences which didn’t require citations or research.

• Impression of the Strategy

I’ve used “Turnitin” before in high school and still in college as certain professors use it as an instrument for academic integrity. However, if that is all you program “Turnitin” to be used for, you don’t gain any other valuable feedback from its function. I was initially fearful of the fact that it wouldn’t have many options for me to choose from, for feedback tools, for my students, because I’ve only ever known it to be used for one intention. I was also skeptical that the feedback provided wouldn’t be in-depth or even 100% accurate if it failed to recognize the context of their pieces. Regardless of the potential of the unfortunate outcomes, I was going to use what “Turnitin” provided to teach them how to find and adhere to substantial feedback versus what suggestions were less key to improving their writing.

Successes

• The students all found and used one piece of feedback “Turnitin” gave them and stated it helped them in their writing process.
• The students felt “Turnitin” was user friendly and easy to use/find information within.
• The students appreciated the immediate feedback as it only took “Turnitin” about 5 minutes to read over the essays and report back.

Challenges

• Some students received less feedback than others. Although it was looking for what I programmed it to look for, some students were proactive in using the spelling/grammar check on “Google Docs” or “Microsoft Word’” which eliminated many of the errors “Turnitin” might have picked up. Because of this, some students didn’t really receive much feedback on their papers.
• The verbiage some students used was vital to the realness and transparency of their papers but because “Turnitin” doesn’t detect slang and other cultural dialects and differences, it was labeling certain words and phrases as being inaccurate when they contextually weren’t.

What to Change? Keep the Same?

Because of the tool’s limitations, I’m not sure I would change anything because then the students would receive even less advice and suggestions than they already did. If anything, I would either not use “Turnitin” as a feedback method or keep it and continue to see how it transforms its feedback as the students continue drafting and improving their essays. We also found the benefit in using the AI tool to see what feedback helped and what didn’t, so to continue getting better at this strategy, I would still use “Turnitin” to help us learn how to do so.

Biases Within AI

• Unfairness/Equitable Access
• Exclusionary Experiences
• Discriminatory Practices
• Improper Decision Making

These biases within AI can hinder the success of our students especially those of color due to its skewed technologies that aren’t equipped for equitable programming. As seen in the video of Joy Buolamwini speaking on fighting biases in algorithms, she works and studies in the field of media and has pursued different projects that reveal the incapabilities of AI. One of her projects included her creation of digital masks onto her reflection so she could experience fun and creative ways of making herself feel empowered. However, the software being used didn’t detect her face as it did others because of her dark skin complexion and facial structure so her access to using these tools for her personal endeavors couldn’t be granted on account of the program’s bias. As an African American woman who aspires to continue doing her work in education with multicultural students, we need to find ways that AI can be suitable for people from all walks of life. 

I plan to rectify these biases by keeping AI’s exposure to my students at a minimum and encouraging them to use other resources to verify AI’s validity and accuracy. I don’t want my students to just use AI tools alone and allow them to suffice for their methods of academic success. I also plan to try and use the AI tools on myself first so that I can see the results AI produces and then determine if they’re strong enough for my students to use effectively. I don’t want them to be discouraged or confused when they see how different AI works for everyone and feel they’ve been put at a disadvantage. Because my CBCI unit plan is on Understanding Identity, I want to ensure that I’m using AI tools wisely so that the results of it encourage my students to be proud of who they are versus ashamed.

2 TCE Threshold Concepts

• Both teachers and students have empowerment/agency.

Teachers and students having empowerment and agency in the classroom can work against AI bias through the building of meaningful relationships and creation of classroom communities that operate within inclusivity and equity. With AI bias having the power to privilege some and discriminate against others, having those interpersonal relationships and being face-to-face helps students and teachers gain back control of their education, prohibiting technology to define who you are and what you can do. We are the ultimate determiners of how we want to use technologies in our educational practices and through being strong agents of change through academia, we can repurpose our uses of AI through exposing its biases and creating approaches that deconstruct them. As teachers who see the needs of our students and students who recognize their own needs themselves, we can collectively use AI to push all members in our communities forward, leaving no child behind.

• Teaching and learning honor people’s full humanity.

AI bias lacks in honoring people’s full humanity because of its systemic inequities as well as its lack of experiencing empathy. As humans, we feel and act upon our emotions not just in educational settings but also in our daily lives. With AI not being able to relate on an emotional level, we rob our students of the personal and impactful connection they should have with their work. AI doesn’t seem to care about the identities of our children which leaves a void of nurture, social awareness, and sensitivity which are crucial social and emotional skills to have in education. When we’re teaching and learning, our responsibility is to acknowledge the whole child adhering to their strengths, weaknesses, interests, hobbies, habits, and more. If we leave AI to do this work for us, we risk not making our students feel honored which furthermore lessens their respect for us. We want our children to feel complete in the classroom on all physical, mental, and emotional levels so through appropriate regulation of AI, we can still ensure that teachers, themselves, are who are making our youth feel safe, understood, and appreciated.

Links to My Social Media

Twitter: https://x.com/jsimonee023/status/1718378611223224657?s=20

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Links to Other Blog Posts

AI in the Classroom: https://blogs.uco.edu/tts/ai-in-the-classroom/

Pros and Cons of AI in Education: https://blog.classpoint.io/the-pros-and-cons-of-ai-in-education/