Schools are testing innovative, automated teaching tools. Would you be happy to have chatbots into your class?
Students in Cheryl Drakeford’s third-grade class in Newark are trying Khanmigo, a new A.I.-assisted tutoring bot.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
Do you receive enough one-on-one time with your teacher? Do you have any wish that you had access to more tutors, whether inside or out of the classroom? Would you ever wish to have to have an A.I.-enhanced chatbot to act as an instructor or coach? What are the reasons, and why would you not?
In “In Classrooms, Teachers Put A.I. tutoring Bots in The Test,” Natasha Singer describes the pilot program that was launched in Newark to determine if artificial intelligence could be beneficial in schools:
A few days ago, Cheryl Drakeford, a third-grade teacher at First Avenue Elementary School in Newark presented a difficult math-related question onto her classroom’s whiteboard “What fraction of the letters in the word MATHEMATICIAN are consonants?”
Mrs. Drakeford knew that “consonant” could be a foreign term to certain students. She suggested that they contact Khanmigo, an innovative tutoring bot that utilizes artificial intelligence, to help.
She stopped for a moment as about 15 students hurriedly entered the same question”What are consonants? “What are consonants?” -in their math program. Then she prompted the third graders to provide the tutoring bot’s response.
“Consonants are the letters in the alphabet that are not vowels,” one student said aloud. “The vowels are A, E, I, O and U. Consonants are all the other letters.”
The hype surrounding the tech industry and doomsday skepticism about A.I.-enhanced chatbots such as ChatGPT caused many schools to scramble this year to ban or restrict the use of these tools in the classroom. Newark Public Schools is taking an alternative approach. It is among the first schools within the United States to pilot test Khanmigo an automated teaching aid that was developed in collaboration with Khan Academy, an education non-profit organization whose online courses are utilized by a variety of districts.
Newark has offered to serve as a guinea-pig for schools across the nation that attempt to discern the real-world application of A.I.-assisted tutoring robots from their promises to market.
Chatbots for classrooms can help to make more accessible tutoring through the automatic customization of the responses given to students, allowing students to learn at their own speed. The bots, according to critics who are trained on massive databases of texts and can create plausible misinformation and are therefore an extremely risky proposition for schools.
Officials from Newark the largest district within New Jersey, said they were testing the tutoring robot at three different schools. The results could be used to influence schools across the United States that are vetting A.I. tools in preparation for the next school year.
For students, take the time to read through this piece before you let us know:
What are you looking for in an A.I. tutor? Why or the reason?
Have you had any experiences when you tutored — either as a tutee or tutor? What qualities do you consider make an efficient tutor, whether human or not?
What do you think of the Khanmigo pilot test, an online teaching tool created through Khan Academy in Newark Public Schools?
The article states that advocates of A.I. claim that chatbots in classrooms can “democratize” tutoring by “customizing responses to students, allowing them to work on lessons at their own pace.” But, critics warn that chatbots frequently “fabricate plausible-sounding misinformation” and provide students with answers instead of aiding students “to use their critical thinking skills.” What do you think are the dangers and benefits of employing A.I. as tutors?
How has AI affected your education as an undergraduate student? Have you tried the technology? What suggestions would you make to Khanmigo’s creators or any other A.I. teachers as engineers develop and enhance their bots for classroom use?
The Ms. Singer writes that extreme concerns about A.I.-enhanced chatbots led to many school districts “scrambling this year to block or limit the use of the tools in classrooms.” Do you have a written policy regarding how to use A.I.? If yes, do you accept this policy? What do you feel we should look at the role played by AI in education? Do schools need to be worried about it? Or, like in the Newark pilot, take advantage of the technology and consider potential advantages?