As schools scramble to find ways to keep AI tools out of the classroom, a Virginia Tech education expert has suggested ways to implement such policy in schools.
With AI usage on the rise, educators are left to determine what place the technology should hold within their classrooms.
Dr. Amy Allen, an associate professor of History and Social Science at Virginia Tech, suggests a way teachers might utilise AI to enhance their students’ learning.
According to her, “If you can openly have conversations and say, ‘Okay, for this assignment use it in this way,’ or ‘Let’s do this thing in class where we do an exercise together and then we have AI complete the exercise.’ Then you’re able to critique that output, and model like, ‘Sure there are some strengths to using this but look at what it got wrong. Look at where it failed.'”
But Allen says if AI is going to be incorporated into the classroom, it’s important for educators to craft their assignments around getting students to think critically about the tool:
“There are ways that AI can support student learning. [But] when you just give students an assignment, they copy and paste the assignment into AI, and turn in that paper, that’s not supporting learning. That’s skipping learning. But there are activities that you can plan that would help support student learning by using it as a scaffold to help develop student’s critical thinking, rather than just using it as a tool to get the right answer.”
Allen encourages teachers to experiment with AI tools before making the decision to ban them from their classrooms entirely or incorporate them into their lessons.
