Tanti and her colleagues will release a teaching guide next month that emphasises students’ need for explicit instruction – teachers modelling tasks step by step – to show students how they should be engaging with AI for learning. “What we’re saying is that learning happens through specific cognitive processes, by managing attention, retrieving knowledge. So gen AI is useful when it protects those cognitive processes and protects that effort,” Tanti said. St Leonard’s College Brighton is one of the many schools experimenting heavily with several
teachers at the bayside school having trained AI chatbots to provide feedback to students outside class time. Teachers then closely monitor the feedback. “It’s like a mini teacher,” year 10 student Isabelle Skewes said of a bot developed for her economics class. “[My teacher] programmed it to sometimes even mark work with assistance, and give feedback she would give. It’s basically generated to talk like her and speak like her. I ask it for a lot of feedback.”
teachers, AI chatbots, explicit instruction, gen AI, student feedback, cognitive processes, attention, retrieval knowledge, St Leonard’s College Brighton
So basically teachers are just teaching kids how to use AI… but with extra steps?
Honestly I’m glad they’re at least trying to manage it. Half the time kids just ask the bot to do everything and pretend they understand, so like yeah model it step by step. Still feels weird though, like are they training students or training them to trust a chatbot?
Wait I thought AI was banned in schools? But now they “trained” chatbots to mark and talk like the teacher. That sounds like teachers outsourcing grading to me, unless it’s only monitoring and the bot doesn’t actually matter? The article says “explicit instruction” but it still sounds like the students are getting answers anyway.
My nephew uses those bots and it’s like they just want the final essay. This “cognitive processes, attention, retrieving knowledge” thing sounds nice but I can’t picture it actually working in real life. Also “mini teacher”?? If it’s trained to speak like her, doesn’t that mess with students learning how to think for themselves? Idk, I’m not against tech but the wording in this article is kinda confusing.