Jennifer Horgan: Used well, AI can assist us to focus on what matters — the human part

Berry won’t buy either because he believes that technology “should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships”. Berry’s line serves as an excellent measure of how technology should and should not be used. Artificial intelligence (AI) should not ‘replace or disrupt’ what is human.

This is why I flinch when I get ‘gentle reminder’ emails at work. An email does not have the capacity to be gentle! If anyone wishes to be gentle they must get off their seat, they must walk, and they must physically look their colleague in the eye.

Berry’s line also leads me to celebrate the potential of technology in our lives, most obviously in the sphere of education, because AI, used well, can absolutely improve and enhance what is human.

Last week, Education Minister Norma Foley announced that for subjects beyond a prescribed list, reform is being halted. Teacher assessment is off the cards, despite bountiful national and international research on the impact of high-stakes exams on our young people.

Her erroneous claim is that AI makes teacher assessment impossible, or at least that it is a challenge the State Examinations Commission must investigate further. For my subject, English, I can speed up that investigation right here.

AI does not “replace or disrupt” genuine teacher assessment. Teachers can absolutely assess their students on work completed in a classroom environment over time and, potentially, with a controlled use of technology.

This work should pertain to the creative element of the course, the composition piece, or something oral. The materials should remain in the classroom and time should be spent on the process of presenting, drafting, and re-drafting. It’s pretty straightforward.

Now, what does need to change is Ireland’s obsession with homework, because AI absolutely threatens that. I spoke with AI educator-trainer Patrick Hickey this week, who pointed out that every child with Snapchat has ‘My AI’ on their phone — that’s most Irish children by secondary school.

As we chatted over Zoom, he showed me how a student can simply type: “My teacher wants an essay on The War of Independence. Please write it for me.” Hey presto. Job done. Now any professional should know their own students and detect AI-formulated homework, but it will be easy for students to feign basic knowledge and understanding by re-drafting what AI gives them.

Into the future, more and more work will need to happen in the classroom under teacher supervision. The human bit will become more, not less, important.

AI as a teaching assistant

But as Hickey also pointed out, AI can do a great deal to improve the relationship between teachers and students, by acting as a full-time teaching assistant. Coming back to Berry, it will not “replace or disrupt”. It will make human relationships better. It will improve and enhance education.

I was floored listening to Hickey voice-type commands into ChatGPT.

“The prompts are everything,” he said. “You still need to be the professional with educational knowledge and experience.” Then he voice typed: “I am an expert English teacher of a mixed ability Junior Cert class. Please give me summaries of Romeo and Juliet for students with a reading age of 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 in tabular form.”

The result was incredible.

“I’ve never used the word tabular so often,” he joked.

A table appeared, fully differentiated. A lesson in itself, looking at ways to improve vocabulary and sentence structure. Of course, students could never know the prompt given, they would simply benefit from the resource and the fact that their teacher wouldn’t be exhausted from typing out a variety of summaries the night before their lesson.

He then prompted ChatGPT to give activities to each reading-age level, asking for differentiated questions and tasks, from lower to high-order thinking. For the 16-year-old reader, the bot suggested they write a one-act play for a minor character in a different time.

Hickey smiled. “Well now, that’s a lesson.”

The limits of AI

Like me, he puts limits on the efficacy of AI. “It’s like a very eager, well-trained butler. But it doesn’t have empathy and it makes mistakes. It’s important to read everything through and to make professionally informed amendments. Editing is going to become more and more important for us.”

The final thing Hickey showed me truly blew my mind. One of the biggest obstacles as an English teacher is marking. I have close to 30 Leaving Cert students this year so I have just taken in close to 30 essays. It’s a mammoth task. He showed me how I can copy in their responses and specifically prompt ChatGPT to mark the essays with positives and with targets based on set criteria.

It takes the bot seconds.

“But you must read the work yourself and you must read the bot’s comments too,” he warned.

“Where the AI does not pick up on error, it’s up to the teacher to include this in their feedback. It puts the teacher in the dream position of being able to give detailed, quality feedback all the time... and quickly.”

As Berry said 25 years ago, AI should never “replace anything good”. A teacher must still read the work. But the time saved is a true game-changer in education. AI can assist us in focusing on what really matters. The human part. The “not being so tired from marking that you forget to say hello” part.

A chance to reform

AI should also push us towards far more imaginative, far more effective exam practice.

One of the biggest flaws with our current system is that the locus of control overly resides with the teacher. In English, students study chosen texts in considerable detail. They learn lines and plan for questions on particular themes. Some teachers provide sample answers. Students scour the internet looking for material. Their parents pay for expensive grinds. Expertise is “out there” and at a cost, with too little emphasis placed on the learner.

What if exam answers truly came from students?

Yes, we can study particular poets in class, but why not offer them Berry, the man himself, in the actual exam? 

We could ask them to analyse an unseen poem. Yes, we do this already but we should give it far more weight, asking them to link the unseen poem to works they have studied, asking them to truly think for themselves, to learn that they have the capacity to respond to new situations and challenges — exactly what is needed in life beyond school.

"We must respond to the challenges of AI by truly reforming how we do things. Halting reform is absolutely the wrong call. We must not “replace or disrupt”, but we must move with the times and, in so doing, enhance what Berry seeks to protect, those family and community relationships we cherish.

You can find Patrick Hickey on social media platforms under the handle @aiteachingguru. For further information on CPD and training, visit aiteachingguru.com