7 Ways AI Can Help Students & Educators

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. In our homes, in our cars, at our workplaces, and in our schools. Yes, AI has made its way into education. Kids, especially teens, are quite adept when it comes to adopting new technology and figuring out how it can benefit them. Unfortunately, that has led some students to take full advantage of AI by having it do all the work for them. This obviously was not the intent of the AI pioneers, but here we are.

AI in education is not necessarily a bad thing, however…in fact, it can be quite useful. In this article, we’ll offer seven ways AI can help students and educators. But first, a little bit of background on artificial intelligence.

What AI Is

If you’re not familiar with how some AI tools, such as the popular ChatGPT, work, here’s a synopsis. This type of AI tool was designed to perform quick, tedious tasks that save people some time and create more efficiency, whether at home or at work.

For example, it can help you create lists, outlines, summaries, translations, and content. AI as a whole is integrated into social media, navigation, security, healthcare, data and analytics, eCommerce, finance, human resources, sports, video games, cars, manufacturing–just about everything we know and use every day.

AI was created to help humans, not overtake us (presumably). It’s meant to make us more efficient, more accurate, and more innovative. AI can substitute for humans in risky situations such as responses to bomb threats, navigation through wreckage, and exploration of areas too dangerous for humans to endure. It can also take the bias out of important decisions that require impartiality. And it can work nonstop, allowing humans to take necessary breaks.

What AI Is Not (Or Shouldn’t Be)

On the other hand, AI can also take commands very literally. It can also contribute to human beings becoming disengaged from the learning process, lazy, and deceptive by doing all the work for us instead of assisting us. AI shows no emotion, nor does it possess creativity.

There is also a large, important conversation around the ethics and morality of artificial intelligence. Will it take more people’s jobs? Might it spiral out of control a la Terminator 2: Judgment Day and consume the world? Will it disseminate false and hateful information?

This is why guardrails are critical for AI. Just as guardrails are essential for guiding a speeding car on a challenging track, establishing guardrails for the use of AI is crucial to steer technology toward positive outcomes, protect privacy and security, and uphold ethical standards in the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence.

Within education, we don’t want students using AI to do their work for them. Rather, we encourage AI to assist them in basic tasks that allow them to focus their energy on creativity. Similarly, we wouldn’t necessarily want AI teaching students; we’d want the technology to help teachers create lessons, generate thoughtful feedback and leading discussion or inspire projects that benefit students.

All that said, if AI is used in a way it was designed to be, it can benefit students and educators alike in a variety of ways. It’s critically important for teachers to learn and understand these tools. Yes, learning what AI is capable of can help teachers identify when students may be using the tool to cheat or take shortcuts. But, more importantly, educators should consider embracing AI because it can not only help teachers with a variety of tasks, but it can also assist students when the proper use and benefits are demonstrated.

1. AI can help inspire creativity. Even the most creative of artists, writers, and musicians experience the proverbial “block” when it comes to new ideas. Artificial intelligence can help spur the creative process through a thoughtful query. For example, if you’re thinking of writing a short story but are short on ideas, a simple “topics for a short story” query in ChatGPT produces 10 unique themes from which to choose. Or, you need to create a painting but are lacking inspiration. Asking ChatGPT, “What should I paint?” delivered 10 more potential subjects; when asked to dive deeper into painting one of its suggestions, “the animal kingdom”, it presented eight new subtopics on which an artist might focus when painting a subject from the animal kingdom.

2. AI can demonstrate the right way to draft a letter or email. Let’s say a student is struggling with how to write a thank you note; they could simply type in the command, “write a brief thank you note to Ms. Jones, my softball coach, to thank her for spending extra time after practice with me to work on my hitting.” In this case, ChatGPT did a nice job of creating a thoughtful, well-written email or note that captures the intended sentiment. Of course, if this isn’t the right voice for the person writing the note, they can edit as necessary to capture the correct tone.

3. AI can help students get started on a report or presentation (not write it). Artificial intelligence is quite helpful for starting a book report or a class presentation. Say a student needs to write a report about Abraham Lincoln–AI can save a significant amount of time that would be spent thinking of an outline and how to craft the project. A query of, “Create an outline for a report on Abraham Lincoln” outputs the following:

This offers what appears to be a comprehensive outline on Lincoln’s life, which provides a great starting point when it comes time for students to begin their research and writing.

4. AI can spark intellectual debates and conversations. As we mentioned, there are benefits and drawbacks to artificial intelligence. Everyone will have an opinion on the matter, which can lead to a robust classroom discussion regarding the positives and negatives AI can have on the world. The drawbacks may include certain biases in AI responses, the potential spread of misinformation, and the ability to render some human jobs obsolete; positives may cover the efficiency AI provides by saving us time on tedious tasks, the ways AI makes our lives more convenient, and other topics.

5. AI can help personalize school lessons. One of the major issues in public schools is that lessons are taught at one pace for an entire classroom of students. Students who may struggle to grasp a concept often get left behind, while those who easily master certain concepts grow bored waiting for their peers to catch up. AI can help solve that problem through personalized learning, which can create customized learning paths and feedback while creating a diverse, equitable classroom environment.

These AI-driven, customized learning paths can be personalized to each student’s interests, knowledge, and learning pace, and learning style, ensuring all students receive the right content at the right cadence as well as assistance when needed. In fact, as of late 2023, approximately 60% of all K-12 teachers in the U.S. have incorporated personalized learning elements into their classrooms.

6. AI can help close academic achievement gaps. According to a study by McKinsey & Company, AI-powered educational resources could close the academic achievement gap between high-performing and low-performing students by up to 20%. Often, the difference between “high-performing” and “low-performing” boils down to socioeconomic status. For example, lower-income students have less access to high-quality (and expensive) tutoring and academic support, which significantly contributes to the achievement gap.

However, AI can narrow this gap through personalized tutoring and homework help that costs far less than tutoring. Plus, these types of AI-driven tools provide immediate feedback, whether it’s a writing assignment or a math problem, in a way that speaks to each student’s unique needs.

7. AI prepares students for a technology-reliant future. Regardless of our opinions of AI, one fact remains–it’s here to stay. We may not have to love it, but everyone should embrace it, especially the younger generations whose future careers will likely involve heavy usage of artificial intelligence. Viewed through that lens, AI should be required learning in schools because–like Math and English–it is a subject and skill set they will need to be familiar with to find a job later in life.

Make no mistake, there is a lot to learn when it comes to AI. It’s much more complex than typing in a request and receiving an answer. What you put in is what you will receive, so students must learn how to properly and thoughtfully frame inquiries and ask the right questions to receive helpful answers. (Critical thinking is one of the most important life skills students should have upon graduation.)

A smart way to approach this is to have students ask ChatGPT questions about topics that interest them–once an answer is received, help students create follow-up questions that probe further into the topic, or keep asking different questions until they receive the answer they had in mind.

About the Author: Paul Niemand is an Academic Coach for Holston Academy. He is a devoted and innovative educator with experience in a variety of capacities and grade levels in brick-and-mortar, hybrid learning, microlearning communities, and virtual learning contexts. Paul strives to inspire students to grow and develop a passion for personalized learning and to achieve their educational and life goals.