The Role of AI in Education – Over the past year, Artificial Intelligence has gained a place in many classrooms around the world. Hollie Arnulphy speaks to some of Hong Kong’s educators to find out how they are managing the use of AI.
The advancement of AI, or Artificial Intelligence, means that teachers and students now have ready access to technology that can mimic typically human capacities. What’s more, it also has access to virtually all human knowledge and has close to human communication abilities.
Of course, this has profound implications for the future of education. We spoke to some of Hong Kong’s educators to find out how they are managing the use of AI in their various settings.
What is AI?
In very basic terms AI is the science of making machines that can think like humans. Generative AI models, such as Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, can read a text prompt and produce a unique photorealistic image, video or animation from it. This obviously raises issues about the authenticity of student work, but it is the branch of AI called Large Language Models, or LLMs, which are really shaking up the educational world. These models allow computer systems to mimic human intelligence to create text. They use statistical models to analyse vast amounts of data to learn the patterns and connections between words and phrases.
The GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) LLM is a computer algorithm that processes natural language inputs and predicts the next word based on what it’s already seen. It’s the chatbots which have sprung from this technology that are proving most useful, and most challenging, for those in education. There’s a whole range to choose from, but the most popular is ChatGPT, which began to be accessed via the platform poe.com here in Hong Kong. Created by the company OpenAI, its attraction is attributed to the fact that it was trained by people providing feedback on its answers to help it generate responses that align better to human expectations. According to Reuters, in January 2023, ChatGPT set the record for the fastest-growing user base, reaching 100 million monthly active users just 2 months after its launch.
Applications of AI in education
Essay Writing
One obvious use for a programme like ChatGPT is essay writing—while you’re still thinking of your first line, this AI bot can pool all of the information available on the internet and churn it out in your desired style and structure! So how can you make sure that an essay is 100% the work of a student?
“One of the things we’re doing in the short-term is going back to using paper exercise books,” says Paul McMahon, English teacher at Kellett School. “This way we can see students planning and drafting their work. As well as for purposes of authentication, we can also see how a piece of writing has developed rather than it appearing out of nowhere. If a final submission is wildly different to that worked on in class, then it is easy to spot.” Paul also points out that at this stage in its development there’s no guarantee that the product of an LLM is right. “I’ve found that prompts sometimes yield results with quotes that do not exist in the text, which makes it easy for an experienced teacher to see where AI has been used,” he says. As the accuracy of AI increases, this could become a problem, but Paul stresses that the educator’s focus should always be on reiterating personal responsibility. “While this is a good warning for students against taking inappropriate shortcuts in their work, we feel it’s more important to place the emphasis on students having integrity, and understanding the implications of plagiarism,” says Paul. “The school has a very clear Academic Honesty policy that students must always adhere to.”
In the 90s, software emerged which could check submitted documents against its database and the content of other websites to identify plagiarism. “Unfortunately,” says Dalton Flanagan, Learning and Innovation Coach at Chinese International School, “AI plagiarism is already undetectable by this software providing students run the content back through a few times and don’t just hand in the first thing the AI bot spits out. The other issue, is who knows what plagiarism is anymore? Is it plagiarism if you work with the AI to come up with an outline that you don’t use; if you ask for 30 ideas for your essay and pick the one you like best; or if you ask it to rewrite a paragraph that you didn’t like?” He feels that the most useful thing schools can do for teachers now is to develop a clear and comprehensive policy regarding AI; how is it cited, when can it be used and what does responsible use look like? Having answers to these questions will help to allay many of the concerns raised by AI currently.
Personalised Learning
Another fantastic opportunity offered by AI is the ability to truly personalise education for every student. “AI can adapt to individual student needs, providing tailored instruction and support,” explains James Knight, Technology Lead at ESF Clearwater Bay School. “It can quickly adapt to students’ abilities and help us meet students’ diverse needs.”
Jason Prohaska, Education Technologies Lead at ESF, agrees. “We see AI as a tool that can help provide personalised and inclusive learning experiences,” he says. “It can also play a big role in giving timely and relevant feedback, which is key to effective learning. However, it is very important that we temper this with the reality; AI is still very much prone to errors, and it should be a co-pilot in our learning, not a replacement for human interaction.” Belinda Greer, CEO of The English Schools Foundation, heralds the use of AI powered assessment tools to provide personalised assessment to identify each student’s strengths, learning patterns, preferences, and areas for growth. “Feedback can be in real-time, providing guidance and helping students to improve their understanding immediately,” she says.
Those working in the field have been quick to link the need to control plagiarism with that of providing personalised learning at a student’s own pace. Many platforms will now engage in discussion with a user rather than simply giving the answer, asking what they think and gently guiding them to improve. This shifts the focus from cheating to learning and will prove an incredibly powerful tool for students of the future, giving them access to a one-on-one tutor even in a classroom situation. It will also be less stressful for teachers who need to move on at the pace of the class majority, as it will reduce the worry that some students will be bored or overworked.
Another bonus for teachers is the ability to implement tried and tested pedagogical approaches more easily and quickly. It is well-known that students learn better when engaged in a topic, yet all children have different preferences and interests. AI can help teachers to tailor lessons to each child, providing an explanation of how an engine works in seconds or even writing it up in the style of Mr. Beast. And if a teacher wants to build on prior knowledge, they simply need to feed the AI bot the topics the class have studied before and get it to create questions that are related. This ability to quickly produce draft worksheets, quizzes and simpler tasks could reduce teacher workload and free them up to be more present with their students.
Data Management
“As well as all kinds of writing—essays, stories, articles—it can also pass exams, code and make suggestions to improve your programming,” says Dalton. “In Computer Science I used it with a class to code a merge sort algorithm and then we evaluated the code together. As with any technology, teaching students how to use AI correctly is important.” Jason agrees with this, pointing out that inputting specific and precise instructions to yield the desired results from tools such as Chat GPT is a skill, and imprecise inputs waste time. He also champions its use for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education for aiding simulations and analysing data. “In fact, it is this application which is most useful to teachers,” he says, “in its ability to automate administrative tasks and analyse large datasets to identify trends and patterns and inform educational strategies. It can also be used to streamline administrative tasks and automate grading, allowing more focus on instruction and student support.” This can only be seen as a positive given the amount of admin and accountability educators are tasked with.
Assessment
Many educators express concern over how our growing use of AI will affect what learning looks like in the future and how it should be measured. “If there is no more need to memorise facts, what is the point of school?” says Dalton. “Maybe it’s to learn about ourselves, to understand what drives us, what makes us human, what we are interested in. Whatever it becomes, I really hope that this will force schools to adapt assessments to more student-driven, authentic, project-based assignments. Collaboration and creativity should be included in the focus.” He stresses that these are the projects that AI is not good at completing, unlike the standard assessment models we continue to use. In recent studies AI scored better than 85% of people on the bar exam and easily passed the neurosurgeon qualifying exam, for example. James explains that currently the technology is moving faster than some school assignments and assessments, so that learning and teaching styles are not aligned with the new AI environment. “It is important that educators continue to monitor and validate AI-driven assessments to ensure fairness and transparency,” he says. Paul also sees a need to reconsider what constitutes a controlled environment for in-class assessments, saying that Kellett School are exploring how they can use on-the-spot oral assessments more regularly.
Implications of AI for the future
“As AI is rapidly evolving, it’s natural for people to feel uncertain,” says Jason. “Initially, we aimed to help people understand its technical side. Now, our focus is more on the ethical and educational. The impact of AI varies based on its use, who’s using it and the context; like any technology, challenges arise when AI is not used properly or is overly relied upon,” he says. “AI systems collect and analyse student data, which raises concerns about security and misuse,” says James. He feels clear standards for AI use should be established to ensure student well-being and privacy. He also stresses a need to determine the right balance between AI-driven instruction and teacher-student interactions. “We don’t want to lose human connection in the classroom or rely so heavily on AI that we hinder students’ critical thinking and creativity,” he says. This concern is pertinent considering that we are all still trying to recover from the effects of Covid lockdowns.
There have been various responses to the progress of AI over the past year, from acceptance and embracing change right through to banning its use entirely in schools. There’s no doubt that these technologies are growing rapidly, and they are going to play a huge part in the future lives of our children. If educators continue to move forward cautiously and address concerns as and when they arise, AI could free up time for teachers to do what drew them to the career in the first place—nurturing and supporting the young people they work with.
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