📝 Strategy For Assessments with AI
Discover innovative strategies schools are adopting to integrate AI and prepare students for the workforce
The University of Sydney recently became one of the first institutions to allow the use of AI for non-secure assessments. Starting next year, students will be permitted to use AI tools like ChatGPT for homework, assignments, and certain types of assessments.
This new approach divides assessments into two categories: secure, in-person assessments ("lane one"), where AI use is restricted, and open assessments ("lane two"), where AI use is encouraged. The structure ensures students can demonstrate their understanding of the content without the help of AI while also learning how to work with AI effectively in real-world contexts. The role of AI in education and in the workforce will be inevitable, so rather than completely banning it, the University of Sydney takes a unique approach in allowing for the usage of AI while balancing academic integrity.
As this policy rolls out, it will be fascinating to observe its impact over the coming year and the lessons it may provide for educational institutions around the world. In this newsletter, we'll cover various perspectives on AI policies and highlight some of the latest developments and findings from educational researchers.
Here is an overview of today’s newsletter:
Diverse perspectives on AI from students, educators, and industry professionals
Latest AI policy updates and developments in the United States
Key takeaways from Stanford’s Accelerate EdTech Impact Summit
Emerging AI Trends in Instructional Design
🚀 Practical AI Usage and Policies
🎙️ Perspectives on AI
What Students Are Saying About Teachers Using A.I. to Grade (New York Times)
Hear from students and educators as they weigh in on the following question: Is it unethical for teachers to use artificial intelligence to grade papers if they have forbidden their students from using it for their assignments? Feel free to continue the conversation in the comments below!
Q&A: Putting AI In its Place in an Era of Lost Human Connection at School (The 74 Million)
Alex Kotran, the founder of The AI Education Project (aiEDU), discusses his perspective on the importance of AI readiness in helping students build durable skills such as collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. He emphasizes the need to prioritize emotional well-being and building meaningful human relationships, particularly as young children today spend hours each day interacting with AI chatbots.
Student Short Essay Contest: How is AI Changing What it Means to Learn? (AI Consensus)
AI Consensus is publishing a student-written article answering the question “How is AI changing what it means to learn?”. If you are a student or have students who would like to participate and share their perspectives on AI, feel free to share this link or use the QR Code below!
🧠 Food for Thought
Why Can’t Automatic Speech Recognition Systems Understand Kids? (Forbes)
For most people, it’s easy to ask Alexa to play a song or add to a grocery list. But when it comes to kids, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems face challenges. Children’s unpredictable speech, accents, and dialects throw off algorithms designed for adults. Improving ASR for kids could open doors to potential benefits such as enhancing access to speech therapy and automating literacy assessments to allow students to receive personalized help and assessment of their reading comprehension and verbal skills. This can even create opportunities for younger students to receive tailored support from ASR systems integrated into AI tools.
This book explores how AI can be creatively integrated into educational settings, addressing crucial topics such as human-AI collaboration in learning environments, AI acculturation activities in schools, and the implementation of trustworthy AI in education. Read about middle school students' perspectives on AI activities at Life Bloom Academy as well as various other case studies that can serve as an inspiration for how you can implement AI creatively into your own classroom.
Watching the Generative AI Hype Bubble Deflate (Harvard Kennedy School)
As the hype around generative AI begins to subside, we need to recognize that it leaves behind irreversible consequences as well. The authors of this essay mention how the massive amounts of carbon emitted during the AI boom, for instance, cannot simply be put back into the ground. The explosion of AI has already delayed progress on climate goals as companies, politicians, and industry lobbyists prioritize winning the “AI war”. Check out this essay to explore these implications further.
👩💻 Advance your AI skills
ChatGPT Foundations for K–12 Educators (Common Sense / Open AI)
OpenAI recently released a free online course for K-12 educators in collaboration with Common Sense covering the basics of ChatGPT and ways to use ChatGPT in your classroom responsibly and effectively.
AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching (Wharton Online / OpenAI)
Ethan Mollick, a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a thought leader in the field of AI, offers a course on Coursera that explores the foundations of generative AI and prompt engineering, along with strategies for implementing AI within assignments while maintaining academic integrity.
📰 Latest AI Policy Updates
Ohio's AI in Education Coalition: AI Strategy (Innovate Ohio)
The State of Ohio recently released its comprehensive strategy featuring a set of guiding principles and recommendations for the state government, higher education institutions, K-12 school districts, and educators to ensure that the state’s K-12 education system is prepared for AI. It can serve as a blueprint for other states looking to integrate AI tools effectively into their educational systems.
Avoiding the Discriminatory Use of Artificial Intelligence (U.S. Department of Education)
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has developed this resource to help school communities use AI in a nondiscriminatory manner and ensure AI usage aligns with federal civil rights laws. It can serve as a valuable guidance tool for increasing educational equity in the implementation of AI across K-12 and higher education institutions.
📣 Student Voices and Use Cases
Last month, Stanford’s Accelerator for Learning hosted its annual Accelerate EdTech Impact Summit, focusing on the state of education research, personalized learning, and the future of education. The summit brought together educators, technologists, and policymakers to examine how AI and emerging technologies are transforming the educational landscape. One of our AI x Education Newsletter authors, Imogen Lee, had an opportunity to attend the summit and shares her insights below!
One of the panels, “AI-Generated Content and Autonomous Teaching Agents: Personalization at Last?”, featured a discussion moderated by Sara Allen of the Valhalla Foundation. Panelists included Lane Dilg from OpenAI, John Mitchell from Stanford’s Department of Computer Science, Adeel Khan from Magic School, and Richard Charles from the Denver Public School System. Here are the key takeaways from their conversation:
1. Advancement of Personalized Learning
The potential of AI in education is increasingly centered on its ability to deliver personalized learning experiences that recognize each student's unique needs and strengths. Adeel Khan highlighted the work being done at his organization, Magic School, explaining how AI tools can augment teachers' abilities to provide timely and effective feedback. Magic School offers an AI-powered writing feedback tool, allowing teachers to attach rubrics for assignments. This, in turn, enables students to submit essays, receive feedback on areas of strength and growth, and continue the conversation based on the specific rubric assigned by the teacher.
After receiving feedback, students can be presented with warm-up activities tailored to their current performance levels. A student who scores highly might be challenged with more advanced content, while a student who struggles receives targeted materials to review and reinforce areas of difficulty. This approach has promise in promoting a more dynamic and personalized learning process.
2. Empowering Teachers and Augmenting Their Capabilities
Sara Allen highlighted the challenges teachers face when integrating new tools into their teaching practices, stating, "Teachers today are operating with lots of new kinds of tools, but not necessarily in a system that is enabling them to put them into action in highly effective ways."
In response, John Mitchell emphasized AI's potential to assist in teacher support, lesson planning, and lesson preparation. AI can streamline these responsibilities, allowing teachers to focus more on personalized instruction and student interaction. Adding on, Khan explained how Magic School’s copilot feature offers 70 use cases, enabling educators to generate lesson plan ideas, create support plans for struggling students, and receive coaching on behavior management, among other things.
Professional development will be crucial to ensuring that teachers have the knowledge and skills to use AI tools effectively. Dr. Richard Charles emphasized the importance of ongoing training to ensure teachers are equipped to maximize the potential of AI in the classroom.
3. Importance of Maintaining Human Connections
How can we maintain direct human interaction in the age of AI? Allen posed the question: "You can start to imagine a world where all these agents talk to each other and no people are actually talking to each other. So how do you think about building community in schools, building connections between students and teachers, while also personalizing?"
Dr. Charles emphasized the enduring importance of interpersonal relationships, arguing that these skills will remain vital—and potentially even more critical—in the future. He argued that AI tools should incorporate a "personal human touch.” In light of this, Dr. Charles also highlighted the role of education research in addressing this challenge, suggesting that AI could be used to streamline the dissemination of peer-reviewed research. Perhaps the traditionally lengthy process of waiting months for a peer-reviewed article could be expedited, enabling educators and school districts to access and apply the latest findings more quickly.
Khan, who previously founded a public high school in Denver, echoed this sentiment, recalling how he assured teachers during the hiring process that "The foundation of our school is the relationships that we keep with our students. And that will not change in a world of AI."
While relationships remain central, both speakers acknowledged AI's potential to inspire and enrich learning experiences. Drawing from his experience as an English teacher, Khan critiqued traditional methods like writing five-paragraph essays in preparation for a standardized test. Instead, he advocated for leveraging AI tools such as video and image generation to empower students to create, explore, and “manifest something in the world.” These innovative approaches make learning more dynamic and relevant to real-world applications, offering new ways to engage students while preserving human connections.
4. Handling Rapid Technological Change
The rapid pace of technological advancement presents both opportunities and challenges for educational systems. Dr. Charles views this accelerating pace as problematic, urging the adoption of adaptive strategies to ensure learning evolves alongside innovation. Rather than focusing on teaching specific technologies—whose relevance may be short-lived—he advocates for equipping students and educators with the skills to learn and adapt continuously.
A key approach to achieving this is leveraging AI to help students and teachers better understand themselves as learners. By gaining insights into individual learning preferences, speed, and optimal methods, students can navigate the dynamic technological landscape more effectively. This adaptability is crucial for preparing students for future jobs that do not yet exist, enabling them to remain agile in a world of constant change.
Dr. Charles envisioned a promising role for AI, proposing “an agent for every student” and “an agent for every teacher” that work collaboratively to enhance learning outcomes. Nevertheless, he also emphasized a critical challenge: data security. As AI tools become more prevalent, ensuring the privacy and protection of sensitive information must remain a priority.
5. How to Introduce AI to Students
In response to a question about the biases and potential dangers of AI, Khan emphasized the importance of introducing students to AI in a structured and responsible manner. He explained that students on the Magic School platform are educated about potential biases in the system and can only access AI tools after the teacher has launched them and provided permission. It is also important for Khan that teachers monitor the interactions, ensuring that students are engaging with AI in a safe and informed way.
Khan contrasts this controlled approach with the risks of unregulated exposure to AI on platforms like Snapchat and recommends that AI literacy lessons be integrated into the learning process. It's important that students learn about AI's limitations, opportunities, and risks under the guidance of teachers, rather than trying to navigate these entities on their own.
📝 Latest Research in AI + Education
Synthesia
The Future of Instructional Design: 2024 Survey Insights ↗️
"The Future of Instructional Design: 2024 Survey Insights" explores emerging trends in instructional design based on a survey of over 400 professionals. The report highlights greater diversification of roles, widespread adoption of AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT and Synthesia), and evolving success metrics centered on learner performance and business impact. Key insights include the dominance of Articulate tools in course design, the growing importance of AI in enhancing efficiency, and the emphasis on creating new, customized learning experiences.
Opinion: The paper's focus on integrating AI into instructional design aligns with the rapid technological advancements shaping education. Tools like ChatGPT and Synthesia are not only enhancing creativity but also addressing persistent challenges such as tight deadlines and limited access to subject matter experts. By automating repetitive tasks and fostering innovation, these technologies enable instructional designers to dedicate more attention to crafting impactful learning experiences. The emphasis on performance-based metrics, such as measurable improvements in learner outcomes, represents a crucial shift from superficial measures to meaningful, results-driven evaluations. This approach ensures that instructional design remains relevant and effective in today’s fast-paced, digital-first environment, positioning the field to adapt to the evolving needs of modern learners and organizations.
Alster, K. (2024, December 5). The Future of Instructional Design: 2024 survey insights. Synthesia. https://www.synthesia.io/post/state-of-instructional-design-survey UCLA
This paper explores the development and application of Critical Race Algorithmic Literacies (CRAL) among Black high school students. Through a specialized technology course, the research examines how AI systems perpetuate anti-Black racism and disproportionately affect marginalized students. It highlights the transformative potential of CRAL, empowering students to critique, resist, and redesign AI technologies. The study concludes that CRAL fosters sociotechnical consciousness, resistance, and freedom dreaming, enabling Black students to challenge systemic inequities and imagine justice-oriented AI systems.
Opinion: This study highlights how AI technologies are far from neutral, often encoding societal biases that disproportionately impact marginalized communities. Equipping students with the tools to identify and challenge these biases empowers them to actively reshape technological systems rather than passively endure their effects. This approach promotes critical thinking while aligning with broader goals of educational equity and social justice. By incorporating critical race and algorithmic literacy (CRAL) into education, schools can confront the false narrative of AI neutrality, ensuring that technology becomes a force for uplifting rather than oppressing marginalized groups.
Tanksley, T. C. (2024). “We’re changing the system with this one”: Black students using critical race algorithmic literacies to subvert and survive AI-mediated racism in school. English Teaching: Practice & Critique. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-08-2023-0102“Chatgpt.” ChatGPT, OpenAI (GPT-4o), openai.com/chatgpt. Accessed 8 Dec. 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.