By Yaasmiyn Hickman
A new age of teaching and learning is approaching with the use of artificial intelligence in classrooms. Students and teachers are beginning to use these new tools to potentially add advantages to the curriculum. However, with new positives come negatives that are set to disrupt the main focus, such as concerns about academic credibility and lack of creativity in the school system.
What can AI do to change the lives of students? John Bailey wrote an article called ‘AI in Education,’ written in 2023. In the article, he said, “AI’s ability to conduct human-like conversations opens up possibilities for adaptive tutoring or instructional assistants that can help explain difficult concepts to students.”
The Chinook explored the topic at CC.
Kathryn Morgan, an assistant at Casper College’s Writing Center, shared her thoughts.
“There are chatbots that act as an extension of your search engine, acting as an online secretary to help you get everything in order on your technological device,” Morgan said. ” The con is letting it take away a person’s ability to think, as well as real human interaction.”
According to a 2023 article by the Brookings Institution titled ‘Should schools ban or integrate generative AI in the classroom, “schools that ban AI deny students and teachers the potential opportunities to leverage the technology for instruction and lesson development.” This form of learning could benefit different learning styles.
Morgan expressed her thoughts on the ongoing developments surrounding AI in classrooms.
“There are parts of it that are extremely helpful, but it could lead to threatening specific types of job markets, ” Morgan said. “For example, there’s AI that has been designed for tutoring, like in math, English, and even in computer science. I think as a tutoring tool it can be good but not the same as human interaction learning. It’s designed to help break down things into easier language. However, the danger in that is students will use the generator to get the answer.”
With the rapid usage of AI/ChatGPT, students have expressed a sense of relief in their workload. The AI tool is capable of writing papers, solving math problems, and generating ideas. Students look at this strategy as a skeleton key for the ongoing semesters. Veronica Sulzman a sophomore at CC talked about the importance of education and obtaining a degree.
“I used to go to the Writing Center all the time, and they really help. However, in my current English class, the requirement is that we have to use AI to help generate ideas and formats for our papers,” Sulzman said. “It (AI) helps with general education classes too because you need those classes as a refresher for later on in life. The other day I was telling my daughter that English isn’t a needed subject. But people need to know the proper basic rules of writing emails or papers properly. AI helps you understand the different formats faster. “
The main concern with AI is that students will use the tool to cheat in their classes, which could cause a generation of students to disregard the material. Morgan spoke about the issue.
She said, “One of the things that is being recommended for teachers to do is basing their papers on in-person human experience.”
AI is looked at as both a tool and a threat to students and teachers. The challenges it brings aren’t solved easily, but continue to spark curiosity in schools all over the country.
