Open AI’s update launch last week included the new Chat GPT4.o teaching how to solve a math problem, but not with questions and examples in writing as ancient AI did. Instead, there is a voice interacting with a student that showed him how to work it out.
The student was Imran Khan (no, not that one), there with his dad, Sal (yes that one, the founder of the Khan Academy). No surprise there, if interactive AI teaching works at scale it could vastly expand what the free to use, school-ed KA offers all over the world– transforming its courses from on-line interactive text based to one-on-one “personalised” teaching. “A tutor for every student and a teaching assistant for every teacher,” as Mr Khan (senior) said last week.
But he also addresses the obvious; if I had to pick between an amazing teacher and no technology or amazing technology and no teacher I would take the amazing teacher any time.”
One challenge then, is to use the tech to support the teacher.
Which is already well underway. “You are late to the party!” Deakin U’s Lucinda McKnight tells FC. Dr McKnight, who has an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant on teaching digital writing in secondary English says, “teachers were using generative AI as a discussant in class discussion, for example, from the beginning of last year. We are way down the track now.”
But it is a path with perils. AI apps are “doing everything – lesson plans, rubrics, emails to parents, assessing writing tests – except drying tears, giving a hug after a fall. But there is, no sense of quality control or knowledge of what’s behind the decisions if makes, the format it chooses.”
However Ai apps are now too ubiquitous to ignore, and there are certainly many developments which could help teachers in general.
A Uni Sydney conference in February addressed dozens of opportunities and challenges in teaching and learning in schools and higher ed (VET not so much) with reports of work in progress, from the operational to the transformative.
Olgar Kazar (Macquarie U) set out using Chat GPT in lesson planning.
Ella Collins-White and Kria Coleman (Uni Sydney) demonstrated how an AI agent can help create “diverse and inclusive learning environments.”
Martin Brown (also Uni Sydney) presented on using an AI avatar for students to practice verbal interactions, “such as delivering bad news or taking patient histories … a cost-effective and engaging alternative to traditional methods like hiring actors.”
And Simone Smala (Uni Queensland) reported on using ChatGPT in the redesign of an assignment for pre-service primary teachers.
There was not much on the program on how trainee teachers can be taught to use all the new resources in their classrooms – but there will soon need to be.
In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry on AI in education, Joanna Barbousas from La Trobe U called for training in AI literacy for pre-service teachers. “This is important as there will be a set of skills/competencies … teachers will not only have to develop themselves but then be able to explicitly teach.”
Rowena Harper (Edith Cowan U) made a broader point that educators and students will need, “the judgement required to discern when AI can be used as a co-worker (for example, to speed up tasks, or for cognitive offloading), when it can be used as a teacher (for example to build one’s own knowledge and understanding), and when it should not be used at all.”
This is going to require teacher education academics to decide how they will, or not, incorporate generative AI into what they teach – questions for ITE courses around the world. According to a European Union report last month, “a clear strategy for teacher education In AI is missing.”
But there and here, there will need to be content for courses, before micro-credential providers, MOOCs and AI companies themselves eat the digital lunch of IT educators. “There is no robust evidence yet for the efficacy of these services, or what their impacts might be. But that doesn’t matter when there’s money to be made. The wholesale corporate generative AI driven takeover of education is in full swing,” Dr McKnight says.
Right now, there is a more immediate problem for teachers using AI. “I just asked the new model for some help with a basic poetry lesson and it gave me blatantly wrong advice about which words rhyme with others. It actually does not work,” she adds.
