📚 Is AI making students worse readers?
Explore the impact of AI on student reading habits and the development of critical thinking skills in the digital age
In a recent article by The Atlantic titled "Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," Rose Horowitch describes how students today exhibit lower levels of reading compared to a decade ago. Even students at highly selective, elite colleges now struggle to read entire books. In fact, teachers often resort to assigning short excerpts and passages instead. Part of the reason students find it difficult to read is due to shortened attention spans and the distractions of social media. Another contributing factor is the pressure to prepare students for standardized tests, which often focus on short excerpts rather than longer, comprehensive reading.
With the rise of AI, students may have even more reason to avoid reading, as AI tools can quickly summarize content and transform it into alternative formats. It’s one thing to read the Spark Notes and another to read the actual book. For example, Google’s Notebook LM Audio Overview feature can convert readings into digestible podcasts, making it easier for students to simply listen to the dialogue rather than read the text directly. In this edition, we will explore how we can ensure that students continue to develop strong reading and critical thinking skills in the age of AI.
Here is an overview of today’s newsletter:
AI x Education Webinar with Sarah Newman
New AI-Powered Tools Enhancing Early Literacy Instruction
Concerns Over AI's Impact on Critical Reading and Thinking Skills
AI Use Cases in Campuses Across the World
Introduction of a human-AI system designed to provide real-time expert guidance to tutors
Join us on 10/25 for our next webinar in the AI x Education Webinar Series, where we will feature Sarah Newman, Director of Art & Education at metaLAB at Harvard. As generative AI becomes increasingly accessible, it undeniably influences how students approach assignments and learning. Should schools and universities ban AI from the classroom, embrace it as a powerful learning tool, or find a balance between the two? With students already leveraging AI creatively, this webinar will explore how institutions can balance innovation and academic integrity.
Sarah Newman will share best practices for creating AI course policies, drawing from her experiences workshopping ideas with students at Harvard and engaging with educators across the US and internationally. Attendees will gain concrete strategies and policy templates and a deeper understanding of how to craft AI guidelines that foster ethical use while enhancing learning, curiosity, and criticality.
Whether you're an educator, administrator, or institutional leader, this session will equip you with the tools to thoughtfully and responsibly engage with AI. Register now for free through this link!
🚀 Practical AI Usage and Policies
Here's what's happening at the intersection of AI and Reading Literacy today:
The Iowa Department of Education recently invested $3 million in an AI-powered reading tutor program called EPS Reading Assistant. This program uses voice recognition technology and provides personalized reading tutoring through a digital avatar named Amira. This initiative aims to further strengthen early literacy instruction, specifically targeting the importance of phonics and word comprehension when students are learning to read.
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has recently launched four new National Research and Development (R&D) Centers. These centers are part of an initiative called Using Generative Artificial Intelligence to Augment Teaching and Learning in Classrooms, or U-GAIN for short. Among these new centers is the U-GAIN Reading Center, which focuses on leveraging generative AI to enhance reading instruction. This center aims to explore ways to incorporate AI technologies that align with established reading research to boost learning outcomes for elementary students.
Classrooms are adopting new AI tools to enhance the reading experience for students. A recent article by The 74 Million highlights "Rebind," a new AI-assisted digital publisher that's transforming how students interact with books. Each digital book begins with a video preview, allowing readers to get a quick overview of the content. Students can then engage directly with the text through interactive features such as annotation tools and a chat window. This chat function enables them to ask questions and receive immediate clarification on specific passages, fostering a more dynamic and personalized reading experience.
Despite the optimism surrounding AI in reading, many are approaching its adoption with caution:
In “No One is Talking About AI's Impact on Reading”, Marc Watkins discusses the growing reliance on AI reading assistants and the potential impact on critical reading skills. While AI tools offer significant advantages, such as summarizing complex texts and making information more accessible for neurodiverse and second-language learners, these technologies can make students prioritize speed and task completion over skill development. This can negatively impact students' abilities to engage deeply with texts, which could have long-term implications for critical thinking.
In this Opinion Post, “AI is an existential threat to colleges. Can they adapt?”, Megan McArdle highlights how the prevalent use of AI in classrooms today is a growing concern among educators, as AI-generated work is harder to detect and threatens to devalue the college diploma. Despite her own experience conducting tedious work in her first job as a writer, she reflects on how the painstaking process of listening to and transcribing intense debates between financial analysts and corporate leaders offered her unique insights into the business world - a depth of understanding she argues would be difficult to attain through quick transcript reviews or AI-produced summaries.
Additional Resources
🎙️ In this podcast episode, Ying Xu, assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, explores the benefits and challenges of children interacting with AI in educational and social settings. While AI can enhance learning by improving comprehension and vocabulary through well-designed interactions, Xu highlights its limitations in fostering deep, human-like engagement crucial for language and social development.
📝 Stanford STORM (Synthesis of Topic Outlines through Retrieval and Multi-perspective Question Asking) is a research preview from the Stanford Open Virtual Assistant Lab that generates Wikipedia-like articles from scratch based on Internet search. It simulates conversations between a Wikipedia writer and a topic expert to deepen its understanding and then curates the collected information to create comprehensive outlines and generate articles. Check it out here.
🚀 Explore how 21 innovative startups are transforming education through AI as part of the Google for Startups Growth Academy: AI for Education program. These startups are creating personalized learning tools, intelligent tutors, and platforms that make education more accessible through technology.
📣 Classroom AI Use Cases
Explore how educators are integrating AI into the classroom! The following insights are drawn from the article “Guide, Don’t Hide: Reprogramming Learning in the Wake of AI” by Monique Brouillette on nature.com.
Christiane Reves - Arizona State University
Created an AI program that simulates human conversation to help students practice speaking German in a realistic context
Emphasized the importance of interactive communication for language learning, enabling students to engage in everyday dialogues, such as ordering food
AI allows students to modify the complexity of conversations, catering to their proficiency levels
Helped students overcome the fear of speaking a foreign language, providing a safe environment for practice
Ethan Mollick - Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Encouraged students to use AI tools like ChatGPT-3.5 freely for learning, provided they disclosed its use
Reevaluated his approach with the release of ChatGPT-4, which showed improved performance, leading him to rethink AI integration
Assigned projects that challenge students beyond AI’s current capabilities, such as designing and testing board games and job interview simulations
Required students to reflect on their use of AI and learn from it, promoting critical thinking
Suguru Ishizaki & David Kaufer - Carnegie Mellon University
Developed the myProse tool to assist students in turning their notes into coherent, polished writing while emphasizing idea development
Helped students shift their focus from sentence crafting to developing ideas during the writing process
Targets students who already understand grammar, ensuring that the tool complements rather than replaces traditional writing instruction
Advocates for AI as a supportive tool that enhances rather than detracts from learning and creativity in writing
David Malan - Harvard University
Created a specialized AI tool for his coding course to guide students toward solutions without providing direct answers
Implemented features that encourage independent problem-solving while offering help when students are stuck
Disables autocorrect to foster better coding habits, highlighting areas for improvement instead
Vishal Rana - University of Doha for Science and Technology
Transformed traditional business education by integrating AI into hands-on projects, enabling collaborative learning experiences
Students use AI for brainstorming, email drafting, and interview preparation while engaging in direct interactions with clients
Advocates for adapting assignments to include practical experiences, moving away from conventional report writing to interactive projects
Emphasized the importance of prompting AI as a valuable skill in the job market, preparing students for future workplace demands
📝 Latest Research in AI + Education
Stanford University
Tutor CoPilot: A Human-AI Approach for Scaling Real-Time Expertise ↗️
The research paper introduces Tutor CoPilot, a human-AI system designed to provide real-time expert guidance to tutors, improving the quality of tutoring, particularly for inexperienced educators. In a study involving 900 tutors and 1,800 students, the system significantly improved student learning outcomes, especially for students with less effective tutors. The system also helps tutors adopt better teaching strategies and costs significantly less than traditional training programs.
Opinion: The introduction of Tutor CoPilot represents a step in the right direction for educational support, as it makes tutoring more affordable and personalized without replacing human tutors. By combining the strengths of generative AI with the expertise of human educators, the system enhances the quality of tutoring, particularly benefiting less-experienced tutors who may lack the depth of practice and knowledge of their more experienced counterparts. This approach not only democratizes access to high-quality educational support but also ensures that human tutors remain an essential part of the learning process, offering emotional and contextual understanding that AI alone cannot provide. Striking a balance between AI-driven guidance and human intervention, Tutor CoPilot offers a cost-effective way to scale expertise, providing students, especially in underserved communities, with the high-quality education they deserve.
Wang, R. E., Ribeiro, A. T., Robinson, C. D., Loeb, S., & Demszky, D. (2024). Tutor CoPilot: A human-AI approach for scaling real-time expertise. Stanford University.University of North Carolina at Charlotte
AI Literacy for All: Adjustable Interdisciplinary Socio-technical Curriculum ↗️
This paper presents an interdisciplinary curriculum designed to promote AI literacy across educational levels. It emphasizes the importance of understanding both technical and socio-ethical aspects of AI. The curriculum integrates four main pillars: technical understanding, informed AI interaction, ethical evaluation of AI, and societal implications. This approach aims to broaden participation in AI education, ensuring individuals are not just users but informed, responsible contributors to AI's development and integration in their professional and personal lives.
Opinion: A simple technical approach to AI literacy is insufficient to address the complex and far-reaching impacts of artificial intelligence. While technical knowledge enables individuals to understand how AI systems work, it does not prepare them to critically assess the ethical, social, and cultural implications that arise from its use. AI systems can perpetuate and even exacerbate societal biases if not carefully designed and implemented. A socio-ethical approach is essential to ensure that AI tools are developed and used equitably, with an awareness of potential biases and harmful consequences. By teaching individuals to think critically about AI’s broader effects on privacy, fairness, and security, we empower them to advocate for responsible AI use in ways that prioritize social good. This balanced approach is crucial for avoiding unintended harm and ensuring that AI benefits are distributed fairly across diverse communities.
Tadimalla, S. Y., & Maher, M. L. (2024). AI literacy for all: Adjustable interdisciplinary socio-technical curriculum. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.10552📰 In the News
Forbes
The AI Education Leapfrog In The Global South ↗️
Key takeaways:
The Global South, with its young and rapidly growing population, is positioned to use AI as a disruptive force to improve educational systems, potentially leapfrogging traditional models.
AI’s potential is driven by the widespread adoption of smartphones and internet access, though there are digital skills gaps, particularly in rural areas.
Brazil's AI-powered educational initiatives, like "AIED Unplugged," are examples of how AI can democratize education, with programs expanding to Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines.
AI has shown mixed results in business and education, as seen in studies from Kenya and Turkey, where it benefited high-performing users but negatively impacted others without proper support.
Localizing AI systems to reflect the unique needs of the Global South is crucial for equitable and effective implementation, with many African institutions already leading in AI development while emphasizing the importance of local context.
CNBC
Teachers turning to AI for help as students head back to school ↗️
Key takeaways:
The 2024-2025 school year is seeing increased use of generative AI tools by educators to streamline tasks and improve educational processes.
AI-focused startups in the education sector are experiencing rapid growth, indicating a strong market demand for AI solutions in teaching and learning.
AI in education could impact teaching methods, student learning, curriculum development, and personalized learning paths, with potential benefits in reducing administrative tasks.
Broader adoption of AI in education raises concerns about data privacy, the changing role of teachers, and equitable access, requiring careful ethical consideration as AI's role continues to evolve.
“Chatgpt.” ChatGPT, OpenAI (GPT-4), openai.com/chatgpt. Accessed 8 October. 2024.And that’s a wrap for this week’s newsletter! If you enjoyed our newsletter and found it helpful, please consider sharing this free resource with your colleagues, educators, administrators, and more.