AI finds place in school environment

Sam Klein
Print/Podcast Editor

Chat GPT became available to the general public on Nov. 30, 2022, bringing about concern over students using AI to complete assignments in school, especially essays.

Webster has been looking into ways to incorporate AI technology into the learning space in an educational and productive way.

“We had conversations within the English department just about us as educators learning more about it because it is such a new tool that we just want to make sure that we’re well versed in how it works, how it can be accessed, ways in which we can spot if it’s being used but also trying to, in the learning process, figure out how it can provide some teaching tools for students as well,” assistant principal Dr. Jenna Klenke-Galbreath said.

With the reality that AI is here to stay, the school environment must learn to adapt. The administration of the high school has taken this on.

“How can we use it [AI] to kind of learn how to better formulate arguments or express ideas, and so really trying to find that balance in it never replacing critical thinking and human expression and also what are some of the ways in which we can learn from AI so that it becomes a tool at our disposal as opposed to something that we don’t know enough about,” Dr. Klenke-Galbreath said.
Teachers have been working with theirs and the district’s concerns over the use of AI in the classroom. Business department chair Mark Young has been in charge of spearheading the education of teachers on the topic of AI and how AI can be used and regulated in the classroom.

“The concern is what if you don’t know how to do that skill, and you’re having AI do it for you, then you never learn it, and then down the road if you have to troubleshoot, how do you troubleshoot something you never learned?” Young said.

“AI can do some really cool things, but it can also allow students maybe to kind of skirt the thinking process and creativity process,” Young said.

Forensics teacher Mebbie Landsness works with St. Louis University for her dual credit second-semester forensics class. Because of this partnership, she must also abide by SLU’s professional development guidelines.

“I’m an adjunct professor with SLU at the beginning of this year kind of in the summer put out some professional development about AI and how it’s being used…a lot of the professional development that SLU was looking at how do you keep students honest,” Landsness said about the partnership with SLU.

A large concern with AI comes in when it comes to writing papers in classes.

“My second semester is when we do a large paper where I think it’s my largest concern is ‘Is this my students work or is this AI’s work?’ I just want to give credit where credit is due,” Landsness said.

Landsness talked about how she likes to get to know her students as writers. “I always want my students to just write for me in my space, so I can hear their voice in their work because AI is not very good at capturing… the individual voices of my students. So once I can hear their voice in their work, then I can know if it’s their work I’m getting, or somebody else’s,” Landsness said.

Concerns with AI and plagiarism with AI have been addressed to some degree, with Turnitin.com, a software that is able to scan papers for plagiarism, adapting quickly with a feature that shows the possible percent of AI used in students’ work.

The software will scan the piece of students’ work and come up with a percentage of AI that could be used to write the paper. The number is between 1-100, but the software website notes that if the percent is between one and 20. It’s more likely that there was a misinterpretation which they signify with an asterisk by the percent.

Landsness talks about her main concern being that AI can affect her relationship with her students. “For the most part it’s just about building connections with students and knowing who they are as writers in my room and as thinkers in my space,” Landsness said.