Two faculty members believe showing students the potential benefits and challenges of working with AI within the classroom can help open new opportunities for them in the future and help students be aware of the concerns around its usage.
“We need to be thinking about how we can train our students, or to what extent it’s our responsibility to train our students on how to use these tools responsibly because there’s a lot of challenges with AI technology,” said Sarah Beal, professional development specialist of the Center for Teaching and Learning. “It leads to a lot of misinformation. It leads to a lot of bias in the way that it represents information.”
In the Center for Teaching and Learning, they are involved with conversation about how to approach AI technology in the classroom, Beal said.
“There’s broader university conversations happening as well,” she said, “but we’re really focusing on the kind of teaching strategies that revolve around AI technology within the classroom.”
Different faculty members on campus have different perspectives on the use of AI technology within the classroom, said Jona Burton, associate director of Educational and Faculty Technology Management.
“I think most faculty members’ opinions on AI technology revolve around the type of subject matter they teach,” he said. “If you are teaching creative literature for example, a unique and creative voice is everything, so the use of AI would not be very well received in that particular area. However, if you are teaching a subject matter based around the use of technology, it could be more well received.”
There has also been research done on the student perspective of using AI technology, which raised some concerns as well, Burton said.
“What has been uncovered about the student perspective has been that students worry about privacy or their personal data somehow being collected and sold,” he said. “Students have also expressed concerns over implicit bias with AI and if it is more biased towards specific groups, whether it be racial, or even ancestral.”
Privacy concerns can be a very valid limitation to AI use within the classroom setting and there is a possibility AI technology could potentially collect and store personal data, according to a 2023 article from Forbes.
Students want to know how to check if AI technology is showing implicit bias towards them and how to also deal with it, Burton said.
“At the end of the day, this next generation of students is going to be working alongside AI and various new forms of technology when they go into their careers,” Beal said. “It’s just that the new reality is that’s where we’re headed.”
While Beal doesn’t think AI will ultimately take over people’s jobs, she does think the concerns around it are valid and students are going to need to learn how to navigate it in the future workplace.
“What we can do in our classrooms right now is give students the opportunity to work alongside those tools,” she said, “and to understand what the limitations and challenges are to using them, while also looking at some of the benefits.”
AI could potentially provide students with more personalized learning experiences and enable them to grow more on their own as a tool to be used within the classroom.
In future settings and even now, AI could be used to bring new opportunities to future generations, Beal said.
“I don’t think that you should use AI to write essays, or anything like that,” Beal said, “but understanding the proper way to use AI could help to brainstorm new ideas. From there, you could write your own essay and fact check it when completed. I think at the end of the day, although there will still be concerns, by integrating AI correctly we can teach critical thinking skills that will help better equip students for their future careers.”
Molly Hoffer is digital tech. You can contact her at [email protected].
