U.S. Educators Embrace AI in Lessons Instead of Policing It
Some U.S. teachers are integrating generative AI into lessons this school year, using chatbots and transcripts to assess critical thinking, as reported by The Washington Post via Slashdot.
At the University of Baltimore's writing program, the director said she used an app last year that tracked students while they wrote in Google Docs, offering teachers a video playback of revisions with a scoreboard of edits, pastes and minutes spent. She acknowledged the tool amounts to surveillance but questioned whether there was a better way. This year, she is one of a dozen educators nationwide who told The Post they are experimenting with a different approach.
Her new lesson plan incorporates generative AI in a controlled way to evaluate students' critical thinking skills. She created chatbots using BoodleBox, the university's AI vendor, allowing instructors to see both sides of a conversation. For an assignment testing evidence-based arguments, students participate in a simulated school board meeting about banning books, debating chatbots with names like the Confrontational Parent.
Writing instructors are also changing what they ask students to produce. Instead of only business proposals and research papers, they now request transcripts of a student's conversation with a chatbot, a handwritten outline of their composition, and a video reflection on how they felt about the work. The director said these changes have made assignments harder in many ways, but noted that writing should have always had more detailed checkpoints along the way.
Teachers and professors are throwing out old assignments, installing new policies and protocols, and incorporating AI built for the classroom, rather than feeling forced to choose between pencil and paper or acting like the AI police, the educators told The Post.