Will AI-Powered Tools Be A Problem To Teachers?

A new school year is about to begin and the use of AI-powered tools may be a challenge for educators. As AI continues to push boundaries and continue to improve, it might be the time where the generative-AI tools can be adapted and integrated into educational institutions, but of course with fair policies and equal outlook on the benefits and drawbacks of AI.

Andy Hoo

Updated September 3, 2023

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Reading Time: 5 minutes

School is right around the corner and so is the use of AI-powered writing tools by students. The question is – will this be a problem for teachers or will it be a good additional alternative to preexisting learning materials? 

The use of AI tools in academic tasks has blown up in popularity to students over the last few months, they utilize this for writing essays, research papers, homework, and basically any other kinds of projects you're able to complete with ChatGPT.

AI-Detection tools have been the go-to for a lot of teachers to combat this. However, the rampant use of AI tools raised credibility concerns in academia and teachers due to the inability to truly detect it.

Truly, AI has gotten extremely advanced to the point where a student can write a simple prompt and expect satisfactory results without doing any work – this becomes a huge problem.

In recent reports, a high school student recently got accused of using AI in his exemplary essay and it sparked a controversy over academic honesty in the age where AI is accessible to all.

Joshua, a student at a small California high school has been hot seated when a TurnItIn AI software flagged his essay for the potential use of AI-assistance. This caused a lot of uproar on the web as the student was given academic sanctions – believing that the AI detection tool to be foolproof.

Unfortunately, the school does not have a policy on software use and it puts a high risk to honest students getting caught by the faulty AI detection tools that are not really reliable. Students are getting in trouble for systems that aren't even fully understood yet.

TurnItIn may be reliable but it cannot be claimed that it is 100% accurate

In the case of Joshua, it emphasized the benefits drawn from AI as a helping tool, but human judgment and integrity remains essential. This became the story where merging AI with education could be a possible solution… or even a new problem.

This raises the question: Will AI tools always be a problem to educators? Or will it be adapted into the system but with fair and honest use?

In a recent twitter thread, a Co-editor of Discourse and Writing Journal and an Assistant Professor Dr. Kim Mitchell RN Phd, opened up her experience in allowing her students to use ChatGPT. 

Consequently, she gave a fair review of what happened, saying that it didn't work for some, and to others it worked best as an idea generator.

After extensive review on how it went for her and her students’ outputs, she published an article that elaborated on her thoughts and insights regarding the student peer review process.

Later on, she confirmed in a tweet that she would probably do it again and she’s planning on giving out a more specific list on appropriate ways to use AI in academics. 

In the coming months, it may come to a point where it would be difficult to decipher between human and AI written content

Another tweet from Ethan Mollick, an Associate Professor at Wharton, shed light on another approach to the AI policies to be implemented in class:

Seemingly, AI detection tools can be a solution for education nevertheless, to create collaborative efforts between these learning materials and school to properly refine detection tools, minimize the false positives, and develop more accurate solutions to properly deal with AI in academic environments. 

More so, educators can see this opportunity to create strict policies on the use of softwares in academic requirements. They could also use tried and tested performing AI detection tools to see what tool would work better for them, but keep in mind these can really only be taken with a grain of salt.

Teachers can use these AI tools from detecting plagiarism and assessing AI-generated contents up to making powerful presentations with the aid of AI-powered tools to enhance learning experiences.

For instance, Chegg and Quizlet, two of the top performing online learning platforms, have recently integrated AI in providing AI-powered tools to enhance student learning experience and maximize productivity.

It should always be considered that the use of AI to both teachers and students may come with a lot of potential benefits to enhance teaching and learning experiences to students.

But we cannot blame these institutions for reacting to the adverse effects of AI because it has its own drawbacks that severely damages authentic learning.

We have yet to see in the coming months whether the integration of AI-tools would even be considered as acceptable and appropriate to educational institutions. It holds the power of being a helpful tool, but it still poses a threat to academic integrity.

Want to Learn Even More?

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to our free newsletter where we share tips & tricks on how to use tech & AI to grow and optimize your business, career, and life.


Written by Andy Hoo

Andy is an investigative tech journalist at Gold Penguin. Besides being a journalist with the heart and mind for truth and credibility, he is also a passionate content creator who loves making informative and recreational videos. He writes all types of news in the technology & AI industry.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments