If you’re a teacher, you are probably quite aware of the seeping of AI into the classroom and PD. I believe the last few monthly professional development offerings at my school have had a portion of time dedicated to different AI tools available to teachers to assist with writing lesson plans or developing questions from text or organizing and presenting content. AI is here to assist teachers with streamlining their work and instruction. I have my thoughts on this…but I’ll save that for another article. : )
And, of course, students have discovered AI’s capabilities. I know I’ve read and heard several teachers voice how they need to change their assignments and classroom to accommodate for this new technology. It is changing how both teachers and students understand and interact with classroom content. Like it or not…AI is here. So, what’s my take on student AI usage? Is AI a good or bad tool for learning? The answer is, of course…it depends. Like just about every other technology in education, the gadget or software is neither good nor bad…it’s how it is used.
If you know me and know my writing, you know that I approach most aspects of education with student cognition in mind. It is at the forefront of everything I do; every lesson I create and how I arrange the physical classroom environment. If teachers are not considering how humans learn when designing what, where, and why humans learn…the classroom and the lesson could be incredibly inefficient and ineffective. So, whether the question is about the use of AI or a Smartboard or whether students should write their notes with pencil and paper vs. typing…I strongly believe human cognitive processes should be the lens through which we assess all aspects of the classroom.
What it really all comes down to is this: Who (or what) is doing the thinking?
I think a weight room or a gym provides a nice analogy for this situation. If I want to become a stronger person, I must lift heavy things. I must put in the physical work. There’s no honest way around this fact. Now, weight rooms have certain machines that can help to isolate muscle groups and lift that heavy weight in unique ways. These machines are not doing the lifting. If the machine actually did the lifting, resulting in myself doing less work, that would defeat the purpose of the exercise and dilute its effectiveness. The work is still there to do, but the machine does assist with providing a unique experience that could possibly not be achieved otherwise.
As I’m sure you’ve ascertained…AI (and really any tool in education) should be like the machine in the weight room if it is to be useful and effective in the classroom. It absolutely cannot replace the human by doing the heavy cognitive lifting necessary for learning. If it is doing so, it is a detriment to human memory processing and should be eradicated from that environment as soon as possible. The content students learn in school is mostly explicit. And these types of memories require effortful processing. Hence the name, The Effortful Educator. : ) This cognitive effort equates to sensing, attending to, understanding and making meaning of, and rehearsing of the content via application and contextual usage and transfer of said information. Any technological aids that act as shortcuts for this process only impede the learning process and harm the student…just as any contraption at the gym that only makes the lift physically easier stymes the growth of my muscles.
But, that’s not to say there’s no educational value in AI. It just needs to be used properly. Just last week, one of my students showed me how she plugged in certain terms and concepts from our current unit into ChatGPT and asked it to design different quizzes to assist her with studying for an upcoming test. She showed me these quizzes. They equated to a mostly flashcard-like study tool. I know some will not agree with me here, but I think this is a fantastic use for AI.*** Like a weight lifting machine in a gym, this student used AI in a way that allowed her to still do the heavy lifting necessary for learning…with a little assistance that allowed her to ‘work out her brain’ in a way which may not have been possible otherwise. She still had to think through questions about the information and apply it correctly in order to successfully learn the material. Wonderful.
Another student last week asked me to print off a small research paper he needed to turn in for his English class. I believe it needed to be a five-paragraph essay with at least a couple of citations to earn full points. He stated that it took him about an hour and a half to write. This prompted his buddy next to him to ask why he didn’t just plug the prompt into ChatGPT and be done with it. I, of course, jumped in with a nerdy explanation essentially boiling it all down to ‘but your brain has to do the work in order to reap the benefits of the assignment’. If my student did go the route of cheating on the assignment by using AI, he still might not know how to write that paper or cite research properly. Sure, the assignment might be completed and he might get a good grade, but he’d still be cognitively starved of that information.
While my student made the decision to successfully complete his assignment in an honest manner, this example does provide a peak into the dark side of AI usage in education. When AI is a shortcut to thinking and it does the effortful cognitive lifting, it isn’t a tool for learning. It is a cheat code. It would be like me walking into a gym, using a hydraulic press to lift the weights, and expecting to see muscular gains. It’s not going to happen. And I’d only be fooling myself if I expected anything different. And our students are only fooling themselves if they are using AI incorrectly and expecting cognitive gains.
So, how do we make students understand there’s a proper and improper way to use AI and convince them to use it correctly?
I think it begins with a better understanding of human cognitive processing. They need to know how we learn and what effective and ineffective learning looks and feels like. I know when I was in school, I didn’t appreciate the need for thinking about and using the content in some meaningful manner in order to more deeply encode and remember information. I really just wanted to complete the assignment as quickly as possible while still earning a decent grade. I definitely would’ve been a student to misuse AI. But, if I’d understood the weight lifting analogy (and other aspects of how we learn), I might’ve changed my perspective of what is better long-term for my education. Should we expect students to act in a more scholarly and honest manner if we don’t give them information explaining why they need to do so? I’m not so sure.
So, when it comes to AI (and just about everything else done in a classroom), there is a time and place and a manner in which to use it correctly. And it will be up to the classroom teacher to discuss and model how to properly use this technology so students do not hinder their growth in the future. They truly don’t know what they don’t know. And because of this ignorance, many will attempt to take the shortcut to the more immediate success rather than put in the real heavy cognitive lifting that leads to a truer, more long-lasting strength of knowledge.
If you’d like more information on a cognitive lens for shaping the classroom with a focus on memory, attention, and learning strategies to create a more effective classroom…boy do I have the book for you. Okay, so I’m a little biased because I wrote it. : ) It’s called Do I Have Your Attention? Understanding Memory Constraints and Maximizing Learning. If you access this link, you can find more information on the book, endorsements from Dr. John Hattie, Dr. John Sweller, Dr. Dan Willinham, and more, and methods to order in both the US and UK.
I have also presented at many conferences and to many faculties on these topics. If you are interested in collaborating, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can find me on Twitter, Bluesky, or feel free to contact me through my website.
***I did caution this student to make sure the information that ChatGPT provided was accurate. In doing this, she also effectively studied the content to be learned, so I see this as a net win for learning.
Feature image by Victor Freitas: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-black-and-silver-steel-barbell-photography-949126/