Using AI in Education#

I’ve read quite a number of articles recently about the use of AI in education. Specifically, there’s be a good bit of discussion around whether students should use AI in completing assignments. Strangely, it seems there’s a fair number of folks that believe that it’s perfectly fine for students to do this. I disagree.

School work, whether homework or in-class work has one goal: to help the student to ingest and process information in a way that aids them in recalling and using that information later in life or in other situations. In order for this goal to be acheived, it is imperative that they use that information, recalling it, applying it to different scenarios, looking for links to related information, and so on. Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel, in their book make it stick (ISBN:978-0-674-72901-8) points out that using information in ways that matter is the key to effective, long-term learning. Using AI to complete a task bypasses that process so that in the end the student learns nothing, despite earning an “A” in the class.

Some teachers understand this and are on-guard for students’ use of AI in generating reports and other homework assignements. Parents are simply wrong to believe that these teachers are somehow discriminating against their child. These teachers want the student to actually embed knowledge into their thinking so that they can make logical, informed decisions, so that they can understand the world around them and can avoid being misled. These teachers want the child to learn to actually think. And that requires that the child have an embedded knowledgebase on which to call when evaluating some event, scenario, or piece of information. Again, AI short-circuits that process and the child learns nothing.

Some parents believe that since AI is a developing technology that students will undoubtedly use in the future, learning to use it now is a postiive. And to some extent that is true. But while it may be important in the long-run to learn to use technology, it is equally important to learn when it is appropriate to use the technology and when it is not. It is also important – highly important, I think – to be able to discern when the technology is not providing appropriate responses.

Negative Effects of Relying on Calculators in Math Class#

Many students today are not taught to do mental math. They are encouraged to rely on hand-held calculators to do the math for them. And this is fine in the right circumstances. The problem with this is that they never develop a feel what was “makes sense”. As a nursing instructor I taught math for medications. I was appalled at the number of times the calculator gave the wrong answer (rememeber: garbage in, garbage out) because the inputs were incorrect and they had no clue that the answer was wrong. Even when it was glaringly so.

Here’s an example: You are administering an IV solution at a rate of 50 ml/hr. The dripset delivers 15 drops per ml (this means that it takes 15 drops for each milliliter.) How many drops per minute are required to deliver 50ml/hr?

I’ve had students give me answers like 1500 drops per minute and I’ve answers like “3 drops per minute”. Neither of which is correct. And the students, because they had no sense of what “makes sense” couldn’t recognize their error. This has grave implications for proper dose administration.

There are a couple of calculating this. The easiest, in my view, is to figure out how many drops would be needed to deliver 50 ml/hr (15 drops/ml x 50ml or 750 drops per hour) then divide that number by 60 minutes in an hour (750/60=12.5 drops per minute).

Even when challenged on their answer the student remained flummoxed by the calculation. “If a dripset delivers 15 drops per milliliter and you have 1000 milliliters in a 1 liter bag, how many drops does that liter contain? The correct response, of course, is 15,000 drops. Now, let’s divide that by 50, which is the number of milliliters you’re delivering per hour. How many drops is there per hour? (some couldn’t figure that out, either) The correct answer is 300. Even still, I had one student who couldn’t reckon that 1500 drops per minute was wrong, even when you’re delivering 300 drops per hour.

Don’t Grade AI Generated Work#

The purpose of grading work is provide feedback on how well the student has mastered the material.

It is folly, in my view, for a student to use AI to generate reports and other school work unless that school work is directly related to learning AI. And, if the use of AI is permitted, then that work should not be graded.

The purpose of grading a student’s work is it provide that student feedback on how well they’ve mastered the material, not just that they did the work. Assigning a grade to work that was AI generated is grading the quality of the AI, not the quality of the student’s mastery of the material.