Day 27. A Question About AI and Education I’ve Been Asking Myself Lately (And Why)

Foto de Hitesh Choudhary en Unsplash

I spend a lot of my time thinking and reading about Generative Artificial intelligence and Education. 

Generative AI was spat out into the world, and as teachers, we have to deal with the consequences. So, one question I’ve been asking myself is this:

How is GenAI impacting my student’s learning?

For a few reasons:

• Reason #1: My students will use GenAI tools and Code Assistants, whether I want them to or not. 

• Reason #2: There is hype, but my students are worried about their future as programmers and data scientists in the “AI era”.

• Reason #3: AI models have very significant biases that affect mainly minority groups, including the lack of training and access to the tools. Most of my learners belong to these groups. 

To wrestle with this question, a few things I am doing are:

• Learning: I attend talks, listen to  podcasts, and read papers and reports by researchers; I read  books by Computer Science professors and Programming Education researchers, and I follow  practitioners who share how they are  using AI. I test and try the tools. I listened to my learners, how they use the technology, what they want to know, and how they feel about it.

• Incorporate the topic in my classes: Although it is not part of the topic of my courses, I prefer to inform my students about how it works. To encourage and facilitate through exercises and reflections on its construction, biases, and real usefulness. I guide them to reliable sources of information on the subject. 

• Keep me informed: read interviews and follow important cases on the build and use of these models. Also, learn about the  norms, regulations, and recommendations being generated in different parts of the world so that I can improve my previous two strategies. 

It is a lot of extra work, time and energy that I am putting into this topic and therefore taking it away from other tasks.

I am fine with my decision to address the topic because my students feel better, contained, and guided. 

But I think it’ll be a while before we have enough research and information and I come to any sort of solid conclusion.

(And if you have an answer to this question, I’d love to hear from you.)