The AI Dilemma in Classrooms: Ban or Adapt?

According to a Pew Research poll, only 6% of American public school teachers believe that AI tools produce more benefit than harm. Essentially, most educators think that tools like ChatGPT are a detriment to students. This is a sentiment I’ve seen reflected in schools across the country this past summer.

When starting workshops where I show educators ways to use AI to streamline lesson planning and enhance learning units, I always begin with a discussion about this relatively new tool. In most places, a large portion of the teachers have never even seen what tools like ChatGPT can do. It’s always funny when I have the website write an original essay right in front of them. It gets even funnier when I have ChatGPT rewrite the essay in the voice of Shakespeare, then Eminem, and finally in the voice of an eighth-grade student trying to get out of writing a five-paragraph essay for English class.

If you haven't played around with this yet, I encourage you to do so. It will blow your mind.

After the demonstration, we have a discussion about the realities of this powerful tool being accessible to students. The discussion often aligns with the Pew Research poll, as teachers are worried and scared about how AI might lead to more cheating, laziness, and less critical thinking. I always empathize with these fears; they are absolutely valid if we continue schooling as usual and do not adapt to the existence of artificial intelligence.

How AI Can Lead to Cheating and Shortcuts

For example, a teacher might give a writing prompt like this to a 7th-grade class: “What is the primary cause of the American Revolution?” A 7th-grade student could easily put that prompt into ChatGPT, and it would write an entire essay for them.

A teacher could read that essay and think they can spot the cheating that is happening: “Wait, the word ‘periphery’ was in that opening paragraph. There’s no way my student would use that word—they must have used ChatGPT!”

But if the 7th-grade student typed into ChatGPT, “Write my essay like a 7th-grade student,” it might start the essay like this: “So there are a lot of reasons for war, but the biggest one is…” That sounds more like a 7th grader.

They can even ask the program to intentionally include spelling and grammar errors to throw the teacher off even more. The AI can make their essays look almost indiscernible from the real thing, teaching students they can get away with academic dishonesty and in the process not learn a thing about the content you are trying to teach.

There's reason to be concerned about cheating and shortcuts (With a caveat).

AI programs like this are free and available to everyone. There is probably a ChatGPT app on every one of your students’ phones. It’s here and it’s not going anywhere. So as teachers we can ban AI, but really we're just trying to ban AI. Kids will find a way. Kids have always found a way. In the 1970’s calculators were banned in most schools. By 1990, almost 100% of schools allowed calculators. 

AI isn't going anywhere, and actually it will continue to proliferate our culture more and more. 

So if we still want students to develop critical thinking and work ethic and integrity and all of the other traits we are worried AI is robbing from students, we're going to have to change what the essay is about. Or another way of putting it, we have to assign work that cannot be fudged with AI.  

Banning AI in School is Insufficient

Asking students to regurgitate information from a lecture, website, or book is no longer sufficient. Many students will find a way to use AI to write these papers for them. 

And even if you use strategies to prevent that, like in-class writing assignments that are disconnected from the internet, someday when students are no longer in a classroom, they will just use AI for that type of writing. Banning it in the classroom is just a temporary fix, which raises the question of whether the learning experience was important in the first place. Also, if we’re being honest, why wouldn't students use AI in future writing, especially if they find it to be the most effective and efficient route to completing necessary work?

Which again, is a conundrum because the shortcut misses out on the critical thinking and work ethic of doing the writing. However, whether you like it or not, people will take the shortcut, even if it is not the best thing for them. 

So yes, there is cause for concern. But here’s the catch: The concern is only if school continues business as usual. 

Without adaptation, AI will create more cheating, apathy, and uncritical thinking. If we keep assigning prompts like “What caused the American Revolution,” we’re in big trouble. Therefore, the call-to-action is coming up with:

• Assignments that AI cannot do on its own 
• Work that is inspired, authentic, and requires the human brain
• Ways to incorporate and utilize AI in a responsible way

Creating assignments that AI cannot do on its own.

The key to this is crafting work that demands creativity, deep personal reflection, or real-world interaction. AI can spit out pre-written summaries or even generate essays on historical events, but it can’t replicate the unique experiences of individual students or their personal insights. For example, instead of asking students to write a summary of a book, you can ask them to connect its themes to their own life or community. This still requires understanding the text, knowing what ‘theme’ is and the core content of the learning unit. Teachers can still assess for understanding. Only now, the personal component makes this a task that requires deeper thinking on the students’ part and cannot be completed with AI. 

Other examples of this are student memoirs and personal narratives, opinion writing, and field research assignments. You could ask students to conduct interviews and to write interview questions specifically for their subjects. This requires a personal touch and understanding. By personalizing the assignment, you’re asking students to connect what they’re learning to their own contexts, and this is something AI cannot do for them. 

Create inspired and authentic work. 

Another call to action in our efforts to adapt to AI is creating tasks that are inspiring and authentic. Students are more likely to take the easier and less effective route of using generative AI when the outcome of their work feels less meaningful to them. This is not a new concept, but one that has always been true for human beings: we work harder and better when we know the work is worth it.

For example, a chemistry teacher could teach their students about water chemistry, pH levels, and chemical reactions in a traditional learning unit with the expectation that students will write a report at the end in order to earn a grade. Those students could very easily input a prompt into ChatGPT and have the report written for them. However, the teacher could also have students take water samples from a local river, identify a pollution problem, and give them the task of petitioning the city to clean that river. Part of their petitioning could be a report about the water quality. Now this report has an inspired outcome. Not only is it relevant—about a local river’s water quality—but the cause also matters to the student.

Authenticity is a powerful motivator. Research shows a correlation between purposeful, service-based assignments and academic success. This is why project-based learning needs to become more prominent in every classroom. At its core, PBL is about authentic motivation. If we want students to build resiliency and not take AI shortcuts, we have to give them a good reason to. 

Teach how to use AI effectively and responsibly. 

We are still at the very beginning of the age of Artificial Intelligence. The current model of ChatGPT is the telegraph to the telephone. It’s the Wright Brothers’ glider that will someday be a rocket that lands people on the moon. Bill Gates says that AI is “the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface.” He says, “The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. It will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other. Entire industries will reorient around it. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it.”

Aka, it’s not going anywhere.

Many educators are tempted to mitigate the effects of AI on the current model of school, not realizing those efforts will be futile in the end, and even detrimental to students. When all effort is towards banning AI and preventing cheating, students are not learning how to use a tool that will be present to them the rest of their lives. Instead, we need to find ways to teach students how to harness its power in a responsible way. This is to teach them how to use it responsibly in the future, but also deepen their learning in the present. Here are some ways to do that:

Encourage Ethical AI Use Discussions

We need to help students understand the issue at hand and not assume they understand the ethical dilemmas AI can present. Create space in the classroom for students to discuss the ethical implications of using AI. You could create scenarios where they explore where AI can be helpful versus harmful. Design activities where they wrestle with the topic. Instead of demonizing its existence, you're acknowledging it and inviting students to brainstorm how to adapt to it as well.

Utilize AI to Clarify Concepts

When faced with a challenging topic, students can ask AI to break down complex ideas into simpler terms. For instance, if a biology teacher explained how cytoplasm works but a student is struggling to understand the concept, they can write into ChatGPT, “Explain how cytoplasm works as if I were a 5th grader.” Or “Create an analogy for how cytoplasm works.” AI does an amazing job of explaining the information. If you’ve never tried this before, go to ChatGPT and paste that prompt and see what it generates.

AI tools can also answer specific questions or identify gaps in a student's knowledge by analyzing their responses and providing targeted feedback. This immediate, tailored support allows students to reinforce their learning in real-time. AI can be so valuable in this way for both individual study and classroom learning.

Assign AI-Assisted Research Projects

Instead of banning AI tools, assign projects where students must use AI to gather research and present findings. They can use AI to quickly gather relevant information, but also learn how to fact-check and verify its accuracy. This means using AI as a springboard for research in the same way we might have used Wikipedia in the past. Find the initial information there, but then cross-check it in other places on the internet or in books. This helps students practice discerning reliable sources while leveraging AI’s power for efficiency. Here’s a tool they can use to vet whether sources are reliable or not. 

Use AI in Problem-Solving Tasks and Project Based Learning

Integrate AI into real-world problem-solving tasks where students can use it as a research and analysis tool. For example, say your students were designing a new dog park for their city, with the ultimate goal of presenting their proposal to the city council. Part of their proposal might require an environmental impact report. AI can assist students by analyzing data on local wildlife, weather patterns, and plant ecosystems to assess potential effects on the environment. It can generate detailed summaries of these findings, suggest mitigation strategies for minimizing environmental harm, and even compare similar projects from other cities. 

This not only improves the quality of their report but also teaches students how AI can be used to streamline research and enhance their ability to present data-driven solutions.

Use AI for Collaborative Work

AI can be an incredible resource to help students communicate and collaborate better together. AI-powered project management tools like Trello can help students assign tasks, set deadlines, and track progress. AI can remind group members of upcoming due dates, suggest ways to break down complex tasks, and even identify potential bottlenecks in the project. 

AI can also convert spoken words into written text. During group discussions or brainstorming sessions, students can record their dialogue, input the transcript into AI like ChatGPT, and have it clean the dialogue up or even summarize main points. 

Moving Forward with AI in Schools

So let’s sum it up: Artificial intelligence is powerful, it’s useful, and it’s not going anywhere. In fact, it is going to continue to grow in its prominence and presence in everyday life. However, AI, like every other educational technology, is a tool rather than a replacement for human creativity, critical thinking, and the connections that teachers foster in their classrooms. Students will always require educators, but they do need ones who are adaptable.

Rather than ban AI from schools, we need to discover when to use it appropriately, how to use it effectively, and teach students how to use it responsibly. And we do this with the same principles of education that have always been present: to prepare students for a successful future and to deeper their learning in the present.