Applications of AI in Education… today. YMMV

Most AI applications in education today are seemingly trying to capitalize on the current buzz surrounding the move to mainstream acceptance of AI since early 2023. AI is the new “HD!”

Remember these – HD vision, blue blocker glasses? Still not sure what about them was “HD.” I mean, if your eyesight is good, you already have a higher definition of anything you look at than what “HD” (aka 720p or 1280×720 pixel resolution) would be, so these glasses won’t magically give you “HD” vision if you don’t already have it.

It seems that there is a lot of marketing around “AI” today (like the “HD” of the past) where people throw the term around, but maybe seem to equate some form of automation with artificial intelligence (AI). Automation, while very cool and sometimes mind-blowing, is a very different animal than AI.

And like this styling cyborg in his blue blockers, slapping a trendy label on something doesn’t mean it is what you’re calling it.

That’s not to say there aren’t any legitimate AI tools out there for education. There certainly are, and some of them are really good at what they do.

One such tool is Packback. Packback is a discussion board plugin for Learning Management Systems (LMS) that many schools of all size use. For example, Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, are the LMS that you may be familiar with. Packback plugs in to a course hosted in one of these LMS systems and replaces the default bulletin board setup. Once installed, Packback (with a prompt from the instructor of the course) monitors, grades, tutors, and scores the discussion board posts against a rubric the instructor set. This frees the course’s instructor to attend to other elements of course administration. Especially if the class is large and/or the students are very engaged, the teacher/instructor may simply not have the time to properly grade and comment back to the papers on a regular basis. Ergo, the Packback AI can handle this role of the TA and maintain order from the chaos that bulletin boards may sometimes get.

Another tool that gets a lot of use in higher education is the plagiarism detection engine at Turnitin. Like Packback, Turnitin can be installed and integrated into the LMS directly to ease the “one-stop shop” classroom hub experience. Not only does Turnitin have an extensive library of published papers and documents to perform a comparative review of submitted work to determine if the honor code has been violated by copying someone else’s work, but now, there is an AI detection engine to help identify if an AI wrote some or all of the submitted work (instead of the student). While I haven’t yet used the Turnitin AI detector tool, if it works as well as the original plagiarism detector does, then this will be a standard by which other tools are held for a long time (because AI is not going away any time soon).

Do I have any concerns about the use of AI in education? No, I don’t have any concerns about AI being a literal paradigm-shifting innovative tool for education. Like computers, programmable calculators, calculator watches, typewriters, and the abacus before everything else, technology either designed specifically for the classroom or adapted to the classroom has always had its detractors when the technology was first introduced, but shortly after we cannot imagine our lives without those technologies. Did they change what was taught? Yes. Did they destroy the foundations and fabric of our educational institutions? Absolutely not. Academia learned how to deal with and cope with the ever-changing possibilities, just like the students did and so in the end, we’re all smarter for it.

And life is good.