Call for AI Taskforce in Schools

AI arrived front and centre earlier this year with the release of Chat GPT as a readily accessible app, somewhat ironically, the thing with all the answers has thrown up as many questions as it has resolved.

The AI’s role in education needs to be looked at and Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has called for the development of a best practice national framework to help schools grappling with the issue.

But what should a best practice national framework for the use of AI in schools look like, and should our nation's classrooms embrace AI or reject it completely?

The use of AI in schools is banned in every state except South Australia, but it’s safe to say that the technology will make its way into every school whether that is under the radar or above board.

Professor Neil Selwyn at Monash University says "if schools are to be places that can develop students’ ‘AI literacy’ then this requires our education system to embrace AI technologies.

"It doesn’t make sense - nor is it practically possible - to ‘ban’ AI from schools.

"We need schools to be places where students are able to gain solid understandings of what AI technology is, and the basic logics and ways in which AI functions.

"Schools should be places where students learn how to work alongside automated technologies … as well as learning how to work without AI.

"So, if schools are to be places that can develop students’ ‘AI literacy’ then this requires our education system to embrace AI technologies - not shy away from them!"

Given it is only likely to become more and more ubiquitous we urgently need to conduct research about how to best integrate AI right across the curriculum.

Professor Matt Bower a professor in the School of Education at Macquarie University says, "Of course we need to prepare students for a world with increasingly powerful AI.

"While it is understandable that public schools needed to evaluate the privacy and safety implications of releasing generative AI into classrooms, it is important that we quickly work towards providing all students with an AI-enhanced education. We must prepare our children to thrive in a future where AI will be everywhere.

"Most students already have access to generative AI from home or on their phones anyway, so banning it is futile. Providing access to only some schools increases the equity gap. When used well, AI can provide a valuable source of information and ideas, and even help develop critical and ethical thinking.

"Yes there are plagiarism and misinformation risks, which is exactly why we need to teach school students about how to use generative AI appropriately. We also urgently need to conduct research about how to best integrate AI right across the curriculum, and provide teachers with the professional learning they need to do so effectively."

The Queensland Teachers’ Union (QTU) and the Independent Education Union - Queensland and Northern Territory Branch (IEU-QNT) have jointly published a set of resources to advise their members on the use of AI in schools.

The guidelines covered four key areas: ethical responsibilities of teachers, schools and education systems; curriculum and pedagogy; products and platforms; and, workplace health and safety considerations.

“Within those areas a traffic light framework of green, amber and red has been employed for simplicity and clarity when it comes to teachers’ application of new technologies,” IEU-QNT Branch Secretary Terry Burke said.

Green categorises applications that reduce teacher workload and/or support student learning without undermining the role of the teacher or negatively impacting learning. 

Applications under the green category indicate autonomous, professional decision-making by the education leader or teacher. 

Amber applications are those requiring wider consultation to ensure their adoption does not undermine the teacher’s role or negatively impact learning. 

Applications classed as red can undermine the role of the teacher and/or negatively impact the learning process and are therefore deemed inappropriate and unsafe.

Such applications include the use of AI in the classroom when it comes to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

For example, a green implementation which preserves teacher autonomy is the use of AI to draft homework questions on a specific topic or generate text for students to critique.

An amber application of AI, which requires consultation, is the use of automated essay scoring and allowing students to research factual information using internet-connected devices.

A red application example, which is problematic and not supported by the unions, is the use of chatbots to enable entirely self-directed student learning.

Dr Lucinda McKnight from Deakin University) is concerned that there is no truly ethical way to use generative AI given the way in which it was birthed.

"Trained on a corpus of stolen and biased material, generative AI is a profoundly unethical tool. More accurately, it is a data extraction service, mining users’ data for the profit of a very small group of white male billionaires, supercharging inequality.

"People have been harmed in its training, for example, through filtering toxic content, and it emerges from a tech industry that is misogynistic, racist and damaging to the planet. While those in early stages of the hype cycle are keen to play with ChatGPT, others await with unease its impact on democracy, employment and the mental health of young people.

"All educational engagement with generative AI needs to foreground ethics explicitly as a first priority, including evaluating the claims of striking workers and copyright cases currently before global courts. There are major potential risks to students through equity of access, loss of data privacy, false accusations of cheating and “personalisation” of learning.

"Yes, students must learn about these new entities, and indeed, to interact with them to cause the least possible harm. It is not clear that anyone in education is yet in a position to guide them."