Reinvigoration of your teaching and students' learning

Summary

Generative AI will and should challenge all of us to change how we teach and how students learn. With new technologies, the opportunity emerges for us to innovate and experiment, creating fresh and engaging learning experiences for students. If properly designed, structured, and implemented, the use of generative AI by students could potentially contribute to and enrich their learning. As we consider the future of teaching and learning with generative AI, please keep in mind the following:

• Our role in the classroom, physical or virtual: Heeding the trite, either/or dichotomy of the “guide on the side” versus the “sage on the stage,” we should practice humility, take a both/and approach, and remain open-minded about the role we may come to play in students’ learning experience in this new world filled with AI and its contributions to education.
• The importance of focusing on the journey: Using a process-centered approach to teaching and learning will guarantee that we design potent learning experiences. By concentrating more on the journey, we can offer more structured, meaningful, and active activities and assignments for students that foster metacognition and reflection, encourage students to take ownership of their learning, allow for more formative assessments, and ensure students do not come to depend on generative AI exclusively.

Divergent metaphors of teaching and learning

It is among the most pervasive cliches in teaching: We should aspire to serve as a “guide on the side” rather than the “sage on the stage.” With the advent of the internet, students could obtain information and knowledge with ease and convenience, and so teachers faced the challenge of moving from delivering knowledge to creating and sustaining learning experiences. Now that generative AI has emerged, we must further embrace that role as a guide on the side. After all, generative AI can:

• Step beyond search engines, which merely present available content and information of relevance to a topic, to synthesize and produce content and information.
• Offer feedback and clarification on content and information.

Notwithstanding concerns about accuracy, if correctly guided and prompted, generative AI could effectively teach a student about the causes of the decline of the Roman Empire or produce an essay about the differences between dark matter and dark energy. It seems that with delivering information, evaluating work, and creating content, generative AI could potentially replace the work of the teacher and student.

For this reason, much of the conversation about generative AI approaches learning as a sort of factory in which the teacher offers information and instructions in a top-down manner and students must work in isolation to manufacture a product. However, with the potential of generative AI, we perhaps can no longer view ourselves as experts depositing knowledge in the minds of students, demonstrating and adhering to what Paulo Freire (1993) calls a “banking model of education.” Instead of conforming to such a model, in which we serve as the “sage on the stage,” we should view ourselves as conductors, “guides on the side,” facilitating a symphony of learning, in which students use instruments that include but are not limited to generative AI to create something beautiful and memorable.

Why educators still matter

Though theoretically valid, concerns about generative AI supplanting the work of teaching and learning ultimately approach students with a limited conceptualization of what takes place in the physical or virtual classroom. Generative AI cannot perform certain tasks and cannot accomplish certain hallmarks of good teaching. Please review what generative AI cannot do and identify where educators could still play a role in the learning experience of students. Unlike (and according to) generative AI, only educators can offer students the following:

• Intuition and empathy: Human teachers can establish emotional connections with their students, creating a supportive and empathetic learning environment. They have the capacity to sense and respond to the emotional and social dynamics within a classroom. They can gauge the mood of the students, detect signs of distress, and provide appropriate support. This intuition and empathy are essential for fostering a positive and inclusive learning environment.
• Creativity and improvisation: Teachers often need to think on their feet, adjusting their lesson plans or explanations in real-time based on students' reactions and questions. They can employ creative teaching techniques, analogies, and examples to enhance understanding and engagement, tailoring their approach to the specific needs of the students.
• Motivation and inspiration: Human teachers can inspire students and instill a passion for learning. Through their own enthusiasm, storytelling, and real-life experiences, they can ignite curiosity and encourage students to explore subjects beyond the curriculum.
• Mentorship and guidance: Human teachers often serve as mentors and role models for students, offering guidance not only in academics but also in personal growth, career choices, and character development. They can provide valuable advice, share wisdom, and nurture the holistic development of their students.
• Social and interpersonal skills: Teaching involves social interactions, and human teachers possess the ability to navigate and facilitate these interactions effectively. They can foster collaboration, communication, and teamwork among students, promoting social skills and emotional intelligence.
• Ethical decision-making: Teaching involves making ethical decisions in various situations, such as handling sensitive topics, addressing student behavior, and respecting diverse perspectives. Human teachers can exercise judgment, empathy, and moral reasoning to navigate these complexities. In other words, they can engage in critical thinking and reflection (reflection will also play a critical role in how students will learn with generative AI).

Process-centered teaching

Educators can demonstrate why they matter still in the classroom by taking a process-centered approach, in which we demonstrate an investment in the learning journeys of students. One of the most common concerns with generative AI’s impact on education is that students will rely on it to produce much if not all of the product they submit. If a student is asked to write a research essay or some code to execute a task, he or she may turn to ChatGPT or Bing for some of the content, only to then expand on and change some of it. With generative AI playing a significant role in the ultimate submission, educators naturally have concerns about the extent to which students have engaged with the assignment and concepts at hand and achieved the learning outcomes set.

Notice: We are focusing on the ultimate work the student turns in for a grade and nothing that has taken place beforehand. The conversation about generative AI often focuses on the destination. Educators express concern that by using generative AI, students will “teleport” to the destination without doing the hard work of actually journeying cognitively toward it. However, underlying and unacknowledged in these worries is that educators may often focus exclusively on the destination in their pedagogy and not guide and facilitate students’ journeys in reaching it. It is a universal cliche: Life is about the journey and not the destination.

The same applies to learning and the work we would like to see from students. Generative AI may challenge us to focus more on the journey of students. In other words, we may adopt a process-centered approach rather than a product-centered one in our teaching. What are the differences between product-centered teaching and process-centered teaching? Please review the table below, adapted from White (1991), that discusses how these approaches diverge from one another in their pedagogy, their epistemology, their curricula, and their power dynamics.

Differences between product-centered and process-centered teaching

You may notice that adopting a process-centered approach also calls for you to reconceptualize and reinvigorate our role and approach as an educator. However, you may wonder: How exactly may product-centered and process-centered teaching affect how students use generative AI?

• Product-centered teaching and generative AI’s ensuing role in learning: It is important to note here that for many major assignments, the instructor may provide an introduction to it for the class, answer some questions through a Q & A, and then leave students to work on and complete it in isolation until the due date. Focusing primarily on the product that students will submit, this approach neglects to provide students the scaffolding and structure to move forward and thrive with the project. This absence of structured guidance to facilitate movement forward leaves students on their own and the door open to the potentially excessive use of generative AI, impacting students’ learning. After all, generative AI can create the entire product in question with some guided prompting.
• Process-centered teaching and generative AI’s ensuing role in learning: With a more process-centered approach, in which the teacher accompanies, guides, and equips students in their learning, students will engage in more deliberation and contemplation about their work. In addition, students will experience and enjoy numerous activities and interactions that facilitate their progression through their learning and foster metacognition. After all, “process is much harder to fake” (Dietz & Keys, 2023). Though it is likely (and acceptable) that students will turn to generative AI throughout the process, students will not rely on but rather collaborate with tools like ChatGPT and Duet AI.

Instructional strategies for process-centered teaching

Some strategies to cultivate a process-centered approach that would accommodate and acknowledge the role generative AI could play, include:

• Reflections and discussions on one’s personal experience with and attitudes toward a topic throughout (before, while, and after working on a project)
• Gathering and synthesis of research on a topic to identify themes and insights that generative AI may lack (annotated bibliography, etc.)
  • A tool like PowerNotes could support and facilitate this process well. Please note that PowerNotes is currently only available for the University of Missouri flagship campus in Columbia.
• One-on-one conferences with students to discuss a project
• Critiques of the output from generative AI for various stages in the process (brainstorming, outlining/planning, drafting, revising, and editing)
• Expression across multiple modalities (outlining or planning through creating a slideshow or infographic, doing peer review through podcasts, etc.)
• Other activities (KWLs, etc.) and classroom assessment techniques (CATs), or formative check-ins (Iowa State Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, n.d.)
  • KWLs: Students identify what they know and what they want to know at the beginning of a unit or project. At the end of the unit or project, students then articulate and describe what they have learned.

Scenario

The problem

Throughout your career so far, you may have used a top-down approach to teaching environmental biology: deliver lectures and then assess how well students have learned the content through exams. This approach concentrates on the product (the achievement of the learning outcomes) and not on the process (the students’ engagement with and exploration of contemporary issues at the intersections of biology and sustainability). You have relied on a familiar and comfortable routine for your curriculum for years now: deliver content, whether by traditional lecture for face-to-face sections and through video for asynchronous online sections, and ask students to reflect on and discuss the concepts at hand, either through think-pair-shares or discussion forums. You then ask students to complete open-book assessments, such as quizzes or tests, to demonstrate their learning.

It has come to your attention that a significant portion of your students are now using ChatGPT for assistance during these open-book exams, even though you have told them to rely on the digital textbook and authoritative websites. You believed offering open-book assessments would allow students to focus on higher-order thinking about matters involving biodiversity and sustainability, but it now seems your students may no longer bother to engage with the concepts as deeply or critically as they previously had. Instead, students are now merely relying on ChatGPT for information about the sixth mass extinction and the Anthropocene, information they then build on or modify to answer the essay questions. You begin to wonder: Should you change how you teach, and, if so, how?

The solution

You decide to reduce your reliance on traditional, unidirectional teaching practices, such as the lecture, partially. With the cornucopia of information available on the internet and through generative AI, students can locate and find information and ideas about the sixth mass extinction and other topics. Approaching your work as a guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage, you create structured opportunities for students to use the internet and generative AI to learn more about, create content regarding, and reflect on these matters in small groups. Students can then share their findings, insights, and learning with the remainder of the class through presentations and other strategies.

Altogether, the change you have implemented is embracing inquiry-based learning: You have changed the class such that it now frequently challenges students to learn about a specific topic or issue, either individually or collaboratively, and then share their findings with the class. Students are invited and encouraged not only to use insights from generative AI but also to corroborate and expand on them through finding and integrating relevant academic research.