AI is inevitably going to bleed into the education world (if it hasn’t already), and if teachers, students, and all those in the education sector don’t learn to make it our friend, it has the potential to become our enemy. In my professional life we have started the conversations around how we can use AI for our benefit and jump ahead of the inevitable. One way my company is looking at using AI is by making processes easier and more streamlined on the operations end. This would be our entry into the world of AI in work life before diving into how it could impact our product. Because AI is still so new, it will be a long time before our company places any product with AI influence in front of a teacher, let alone a student. Teachers may not have this kind of luxury though, and will have to adapt sooner rather than later to ensure students are educated on how to use this tool properly and ethically. One way to introduce AI to students could be modeling how to use AI as “Google” rather than a super smart classmate that students can steal homework from. Teachers can model this by asking AI for ideas on how to assess students on their most recent geometry unit which covers X, Y, and Z topics. Students can vote on whether they like the AI suggestion, or would like to search for another. The same process can be done, asking AI how the teacher should provide feedback, grade assessments, and even how students could use its assistance to complete the assignment. Monash University (n.d.) suggests that students provide the exact prompt that was entered into the system, and any and all changes that were made. Monash University’s Learning and Teaching: Teach HQ site also has a chart of student tasks and the ability of AI to complete them. Tasks like closed / short answer questions are quite easy for AI, whereas tasks such as interviews and recordings are much more difficult. While this list is a great reference point for the ability of AI, I would caution the reliance on it’s accuracy as AI continues to evolve and grow. Any way you sprint it, the most important factor when introducing AI to students like this is to make sure that the student maintains a critical eye while interacting with the technology and checks the validity of all AI outputs. This video shows what can happen when you leave your translation in the trust of Google Translate, which is a great (and funny) way to emphasize the importance of critical thinking with technology, and how vital human knowledge is. For now, teachers should start learning how to make AI their friend while administration and larger corporations tackle the long term impacts of AI on education. References:
Learning and Teaching: Teach HQ. (n.d.). Generative AI and assessment Monash Univeristy. “Let It Go” From Frozen According to Google Translate. (2014). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bVAoVlFYf0
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This past week I was in Boston, Massachusetts attending my summer team meeting. While the theme of the meeting was “incorporating DEIB practices into our daily work”, I walked away with a slightly different message.
This meeting was the first time that I have met any of my coworkers in person. Although I have been working with this team for over a year now, I have only ever met any of my team members over Zoom. While I have started to form relationships with many of them, there was most definitely some aspect of those connections that was missing. What I now realize is that the element that was missing was the “humanizing” element. As I return from my time in person with my team, I can’t help but feel empathy for those who may never fill this gap in their connections, especially students in online courses. Having been an in person, hybrid, and virtual student, I know the effects of each modality and the importance of humanizing tools for instruction to fill in gaps that come with the online and hybrid modalities. The good news is that there are guides to make humanizing instructional tools easier. Pacansky-Brock’s (2020) eight humanizing elements lay out eight different tools that you can include in your online course to ensure that your students are more than just “names on screens”. One tool that I plan to implement in my workplace instructional tools is bumper videos. These videos are short checkpoints within course content that clarify sticking points and differentiate learning. How I am going to implement this tool: My company uses tools called “Job Aids”. These job aids are documents that live in a SharePoint site, which guide you through processes. This is a broad definition, because they are used for a broad range of tasks. For almost any process I may need to learn, I am able to find a Job Aid in our company SharePoint site. This makes for a convenient learning experience, allowing me to reference instructions whenever and however often I need to. While these documents are great for this purpose, they lack humanization. By implementing bumper videos, not only are you adding a human element to the tools, but also incorporating differentiation, check points, and providing multiple modalities for multiple learning needs. These bumper videos can be placed throughout the document, screen sharing an example of a difficult aspect of the process, or included at the end of the document outlining the entire process and focusing on any common sticking points. To view how I added bumper videos to a Job Aid, click here. How you can implement this tool: In a K-12 online classroom, these bumper videos can be placed in the middle of a module. If there is a key term you want students to remember you can create a short 15-20 second video of yourself demonstrating that term, connecting that term to your life or their lives, or spelling and defining the term using your own voice. By simply placing a voice with words, human connection can be emphasized and connect students to content. In an online learning environment outside of the K-12 world, bumper videos can be used in the same way. Can you make a connection between current content and past or future content? Can you place a video in the middle of your module encouraging students to silently reflect for 2 minutes on the content learned previously? For more assistance of humanizing your online courses and / or how to create your own bumper videos, check out the content below: Michelle Pacansky-Brock’s “Bumper Videos and Microlectures” George Mason University: “Humanizing Your Online Course: Using Brief “Imperfect” Videos” California Community Colleges “How and why to humanize your online course” References: Pacansky-Brock, M. (2020). How to humanize your online class, version 2.0 [Infographic]. https://brocansky.com/humanizing/infographic2 |
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