How will Modesto schools encourage and restrict the use of AI in the classroom? | Opinion
The concept of Artificial Intelligence is an ever-changing field that will continue to reinvent almost every aspect of our lives, including education. AI is an intelligence demonstrated by machines that can learn, adapt and reason. In the near future, we can expect to see an even greater shift in the use of AI and technology in the workplace, cybersecurity, search engines and, of course, the classroom.
Though using AI can be a risk, it can also be an extremely efficient tool to enhance the learning process.
It is crucial for students and teachers to understand both the limitations and the potential of AI on school campuses. The Modesto City School District, however, has decided to hold off on making guidelines regarding AI.
Mike Rich, an associate superintendent at Modesto City Schools, said the district awaits guidance from the California Department of Education as to the local use of “AI in the education system in a thoughtful, effective way.”
“The CDE and the California School Board Association will guide school districts, such as us, to a model policy to adjust how students will justify their learning as AI becomes increasingly more entrenched in education,” Rich said.
One of the more recent iterations of AI are “chatbots” such as ChatGPT. These are online programs that utilize AI to interpret customer questions and formulate detailed responses instantly. These tools are extremely powerful as they have the ability to gather information, answer questions and summarize documents all with minimal effort from the user.
Though these chatbots can be helpful and efficient, they can also be dangerous. Using them can pose undesirable outcomes such as responses skewed with bias. For instance, if a student is assigned an essay they don’t want to write, they might choose to have a chatbot complete it on their behalf. Students should be directed to think critically and extract information on their own rather than rely on bots, which can have severe consequences for plagiarism.
TurnItIn.com, a software that can detect similarities between over 91 billion webpages and previously submitted student work, is a common service teachers use. More recently, TurnItIn has developed an AI detection capability, which can detect machine text. TurnItIn claims its technology is 98% accurate, however flaws in the technology were apparent when put to the test by The Washington Post.
Already, we are seeing that the vastness of AI is an impediment to students’ learning. Simply put, students don’t understand AI. They have not yet been taught that AI does not generate unique answers when given the same prompt by different people, and that AI can confidently generate incorrect answers.
There have been cases where students have made the decision to entirely plagiarize their essay from a chatbot and gotten caught. This single act tarnished their previously pristine academic record, affecting their transcript and future education.
Though there are disadvantages, AI can be used as a significant tool in education and has the capacity to be used to their advantage. Students and educators alike must be guided on how to navigate the new and nuanced territory of AI.
Students, teachers and parents can benefit from using AI to make learning more efficient and accessible to all. Students can use chatbots to create mock exams and practice questions, analyze their performance on a particular subject, interact with information from their textbook, create flashcards and deliver feedback. Chatbots can assist teachers in creating classroom content and lesson plans; expedite the grading process; analyze class progress and performance; and reduce workload through being a virtual assistant.
Most importantly, AI tutoring systems can help bridge the gap between schools that receive more funding and the Modesto City School District, narrowing the disparities in educational resources and opportunities.