BISMARCK, N.D. (North Dakota News Cooperative) – Talk with K-12 teachers and administrators about AI in schools and there’s a sense of exasperation.
Not enough time to learn fast moving development of AI tools. Not enough training. Kids are far ahead of many teachers in adopting AI. Too many kids are using AI as a shortcut instead of as a tool to assist learning. Lack of ethical understanding among some students that may lead to abuse or misuse of those tools.
Talk with those same educators, and there’s also a sense of excitement.
Greater efficiency in lesson planning. The potential for superior, targeted, individualized learning. The possibility to quickly address and fill gaps in knowledge for a specific student. The ability to explore and work ahead for those students quickly approaching mastery of a subject.
Addressing the challenges while embracing the promise of AI is what educators are currently grappling with.
With little top-down direction, schools and school districts across the state are in charge of coming up with their own policies regarding the use of AI by educators and students.
The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction has a guidance framework educators can access but it is nearly three years old now.
Since AI and its adoption is developing so fast, some of the information is out of date.
“I think that the time is probably right to review that and explore if there are ways that we can probably put out better, more actionable recommendations,” said new state superintendent of schools Levi Bachmeier.
Bachmeier said it is important to distinguish between teacher-facing and student-facing AI tools and that those categories need to be addressed differently.
“I view those as two very different discussions, and I think we have schools across the state that are certainly exploring and implementing strategies that sort of align with both of those philosophies,” he said.
Two Steps Behind
Jennifer Kallenbach, a high school history and social science teacher in the Kidder County school district, said teachers often feel two steps behind when it comes to using AI or addressing the use of AI with students.
“Once we catch up, students will probably find a loophole,” she said.
Kallenbach appreciated that local school administrators set aside time last year for an accredited course that allowed a deeper understanding of AI tools.
She tries to explain to her students how AI can be helpful, but only up to a point.
“I don’t ever 100% discourage students from using it,” Kallenbach said. “I’ve told them you can sometimes jump on ChatGPT and have a brainstorming session with it, but I really warn them, from a history teacher perspective, it can be inaccurate and sometimes totally hallucinates quotes.”
Striking a balance is important for Kallenbach.
“I always think, how can I help students use this as a tool to make their life more efficient, but not lose that deep, slow, critical thinking which is really the most beautiful thing about education,” she said.
Bachmeier said that if he had to summarize his feelings on how AI is working its way into education, it comes down to three things.
“I think it’s inevitable. It makes me nervous. And it also makes me excited,” he said.
The greatest promise is how AI tools can be used by educators both in reducing the time needed for administrative tasks and increasing the bandwidth for strengthening the relationships between teachers and their students for learning, Bachmeier said.
“I think when it becomes student facing or student utilized, that’s where there are both opportunities and concerns,” he said.
“But if we can find ways to help support districts, to help support teachers, to use the benefits of AI to make their work more efficient and to help them better use data to recognize the right interventions at the right time for students, then they can do what they do really well,” Bachmeier said.
Finding the balance is a conundrum for most educators across the state, particularly when students use the technology for shortcuts.
“Schools are being challenged greatly with inappropriate use, which is actually hurting students in the long run,” said Mark Andresen, principal at Mandan High School. “Especially in math and writing.”
Need for discussion, training
Cory Steiner, superintendent of Fargo Public Schools, said a recent meeting with his student cabinet brought up several discussions of AI he felt were illuminating.
“They really want to work with their teachers to figure out when AI is appropriate,” Steiner said, adding that they want teachers to have those conversations with them. “I thought that was pretty telling and actually pretty high-level.”
Steiner did say the fast development of AI tools can be overwhelming for some teachers who might opt not to use them at all because the technology can change so swiftly.
Most use in the classroom now is teacher and topic dependent, he said.
“That’s partly because we haven’t done a ton of training around it, because I think, honestly, it’s changing so fast that even for those who train, it is difficult to keep up on as well,” Steiner said.
Inappropriate use of AI should be used as a teaching opportunity more than an avenue for punishment, especially if the behavior is not repeated, Steiner said.
“Honestly, with something that’s changing faster than anything we’ve seen in education, that’s going to have to be our mentality going forward,” he said.
Levi Bachmeier, North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction
Bachmeier said school districts are talking with each other about best practices when it comes to defining appropriate and inappropriate uses of AI, and that in a state that values local control, honing those will ultimately be up to them.
He said the DPI can help in providing guidance and assist in building capacity, and will be working to update policy around those in a quick moving environment.
“I think it’s going to be walking a fine line of how do you provide that support that’s relevant, but also, to a certain extent, a bit timeless, because it is evolving so fast,” Bachmeier said. “We want to make sure that any information that’s coming out of here is relevant from the moment that districts are attempting to put it to use.”
Need for time, ethics 101
One thing many teachers would like is simply more time themselves to learn and explore the AI tools school districts have available, to better understand them and potentially use them for greater learning efficiency.
For Loren Nieuwsma, a speech and English teacher at Mandan High School, time is the main crux of the issue for him.
“I think the problem is that when you give so many tools to teachers and say, well here’s AI and how you use it, it’s turned into this thing in the past two years where teachers do not have the time to dive into things,” Nieuwsma said. “It’s literally been so overwhelming for teachers.”
Besides allowing time for a greater understanding of the AI tools at their disposal, teachers also likely need more time to develop policies about how to discuss ethics and responsible use of AI with their students.
“We’ve had a lot of ethical discussions in our department, about what is ethical use, about what we want students to be able to do,” Nieuwsma said. “How are people teaching it? Again, it comes down to time.”
Ethical usage is the hardest part of grappling with AI in the classroom, Dickinson High School principal Jefferey Brandt said, and raises questions about where support ends and where academic dishonesty begins.
Brandt said teaching students about appropriate and inappropriate uses is possibly an area where educators are falling short, though academic dishonesty policies to address cheating and plagiarizing are only part of the formula.
“Whether a teacher is familiar with how students use AI or not, my hope is that our teachers know our students abilities and skill levels,” Brandt said. “If a student is utilizing something to cheat or plagiarize, a teacher knowing a student well should be able to identify a change in the student’s performance and address that change.”
Grayson Erling, a fifth grade teacher in the Bismarck Public Schools system, said he sees the potential for using AI tools as very helpful, but hasn’t seen a lot of adoption at the elementary level.
He also said there’s been minimal time set aside for training at that level – in his case around 45 minutes during one of the normal teacher training days — but it’s something he thinks would be helpful, particularly in preparing elementary students going on to middle school.
“BPS being such a large district, having a cohesiveness between all levels would be helpful, so how is the middle school using this and what can I show fifth graders to get them ready for middle school,” Erling said.
“I think just having them have an idea about how they can use those tools as a tool, and not just as a copy and paste, I think that’s a huge part of that,” he said.
“These kids, they’re smart, they know their way around a computer, which is a scary thing,” Erling said. “I feel like we don’t do enough for the safety of these kids, there are so many things they’re able to get to on these websites, they’re able to get a workaround, and it’s alarming.”
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