“AI will create a learning revolution, and it’s only just getting started. It has the potential to help teachers and students. While we won’t achieve perfection in its implementation, suppressing AI would be misguided. Instead, we must focus on empowering students and teachers to utilize AI ethically and responsibly, providing them with the necessary support to navigate this evolving landscape.”

(Alexander McNeece, Director of Instructional Services Garden City Public Schools)

The quote from McNeece above describes where we, as an educator, should stand on AI. Artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay. If we want our learners to be workforce-ready when they graduate, we must teach the ethical use of AI across the curriculum rather than focus on the potential misuse of AI e.g., plagiarism. Plagiarism or cheating is not the reason to not teach or use AI in the curriculum. Academic integrity is about developing ethical decision-making skills that learners can use daily in and beyond the classroom. Academic integrity is a foundation for professional practice (Eaton, 2023).

Based on my experience using AI tools throughout this semester, I believe AI can be used as our digital assistant to accelerate our work as instructors to become increasingly productive e.g., create lesson plans, quizzes, modules, or discover ideas/resources/materials for our lectures and to improve our writing. For learners, AI can assist learners in collecting and analyzing data/information; be helpful assistance when the instructor is not available; or help learners individualize their learning opportunities e.g., translating materials to their language or revising the materials to suit the learners’ level or skill.

However, we have to make sure to check the accuracy of the AI outputs because AI sometimes produces outputs seemingly intelligent responses that are nonsensical (AI hallucination or confabulation). AI makes a guess based on training, data used, and learned associations resulting in unpredictable outputs and can be biased. ChatGPT is one of the AI tools that I believe will continue to grow in education and as of today, this tool is trained to provide you outputs for information and resources up to January 2022. You can check the accuracy by checking with the subject matter expert, other AI tools, or Google Scholar.

Privacy is another concern in AI. Without us knowing it, technologies that we use e.g., smartphones and the internet have made AI easier to collect personal data. I often feel that am being monitored by my smartphone, tablet, and laptop e.g., I suddenly receive offer coupons based on my past purchases or internet displayed suggested sites based on my search histories. 

If we want our learners to be workforce-ready when they graduate, we must teach the ethical use of AI across the curriculum rather than focus on the potential misuse of AI e.g., plagiarism. Plagiarism or cheating is not the reason to not teach or use AI in the curriculum. Academic integrity is about developing ethical decision-making skills that learners can use daily in and beyond the classroom. Academic integrity is a foundation for professional practice (Eaton, 2023).

To build the capacity for the proper use of AI, we need to start educating ourselves first to understand more about AI including its benefits, limitations, and challenges, and know how to mitigate the risks of AI. In the next step, we can equip our learners on how to use AI responsibly and ethically by creating an AI ethical guideline and engaging learners with interactive routine discussions about their experience in using AI to foster their ability to recognize AI ethical risks and concerns.

When I started this course, I had very limited knowledge about AI or emerging technology. I do not think I could write my reflection about AI above. Now, I know a number of emerging technologies e.g., AI, gamification, and immersive VR/AR. The hands-on experience or learning exercise and blog critique specifically the multimedia are my favorite parts of this course. These tasks allowed me to learn and practice how to use them, and to foster my critical pedagogical thinking on how to apply those tools to my teaching and learning practices.

The synchronous sessions are my favorite as well. Dr. Levina provided lectures about the materials of the week. The information and discussions with my classmates about the topics gave me a better perspective and understanding than just reading the course materials.

For future development, it would be great if the assignments for this course could be focused on the learning exercises and blog critique multimedia (hands-on experience).  The discussion forums also focus on those hands-on experience activities. I think it would be great to learn from other experiences (as the Unit 4 Primer Discussion).

In summary, it has been a great learning journey this semester. Thank you, Dr. Levina, for all your dedication, patience, and support throughout this course.  You are an amazing professor and I hope I will see you again in another course. 

References:

Eaton, S. E. (2023). Using Generative AI Ethically: Teaching, Learning, and Assessing in a Postplagiarism Era. [Conference Slides]

Hwang, G. J., & Chen, N. S. (2023). Exploring the Potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Education: Applications, Challenges, and Future Research Directions. Educational Technology & Society, 26(2).