As AI enters classrooms, NCW educators rethink how students learn

NORTH CENTRAL WASHINGTON — In a short period of time, artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly integrated into the everyday lives of millions of people, including students.

As AI use among students becomes more widespread, it has raised fundamental questions about learning, accountability and critical thinking, challenging educators to rethink their approach.

“We're still trying to grapple with, what do you do to teach students who can find answers to anything, without ever doing any real learning?” said Dr. Derin Wysham, a math professor at Wenatchee Valley College (WVC).

While the roll out of OpenAI began to test student’s integrity across all subjects, math instructors were already confronting this challenge with other digital tools, said Wysham. First, it was Chegg, an online “homework helper” that enabled students to upload and find answers to quizzes and homework. Then, Photomath became popular. All students had to do was take a photo of the problem, and the app would provide the full process and solution.

These tools, being used as crutches, started to become more apparent as time went on, according to Wysham. Students could start with a strong understanding of Calculus 1, but the more they started relying on these programs, those foundational skills would fade.

“By the time they get to differential equations, it's just too much stuff that they haven't really been practicing, that they haven't really been doing, and they fail out, but now they're two years into their degree, and now they're sort of lost,” said Wysham.

Outside of the classroom, Wysham has witnessed the consequences play out in real time, watching analysts, who were tasked with informing U.S. offshore fishing policy, draw incorrect conclusions because they did not have an understanding of the differential equations used to make their models. Without that understanding, they were unable to check their own work.

“You become kind of, actually a nonfunctional liability to science,” said Wysham. “You really are just kind of a lost individual at the mercy of whatever the machine is telling you.”

Several years ago, WVC math faculty decided to make a change: requiring in-person exams. 

“At first, we just failed almost every single one of the students. It was catastrophic, because they were, in fact, all cheating, or, you know, 90 percent of them. So that was pretty eye opening,” said Wysham.

Once the requirement became widely expected, the professors started to see a change. Wysham said he can now tell immediately when someone starts using AI for help, but for the most part, students are doing the work themselves. In addition, the math faculty have been trying to foster more open discussions with students about taking more responsibility in their own education.

“I think we're already beyond the worst of it among the students, at least in our math classes, but that's because we hit it head on and were open about it,” said Wysham.

This proactive, candid approach is also starting to take shape in school districts across the region, including Cascade, Quincy, Wenatchee, Cashmere and Chelan. Some districts are even working to flip the script. Rather than outright prohibiting AI due to its reputation for cheating and plagiarism, schools are figuring out how to teach students how to use the technology responsibly.

“We can embrace it, or we can sit in the background, but kids are going to use it whether or not we're teaching them, so why wouldn't we be the ones to help them learn how to use it responsibly, and also learn alongside with them?” said Chelan High School’s College and Career Coordinator Amy Andrews.

This past year, both Chelan and Cashmere School Districts have taken steps to develop policy framework, train their staff, and build a structure for learning responsible AI use.

“We as a district have a model that, in short, looks like human, then AI, and then human again, " said Cashmere High School Principal Craig MacKenzie.

Cashmere School District started shaping its vision for AI last spring, beginning with faculty use. This fall, the high school started dipping its toes with AI in the classroom, according to MacKenzie. 

“We landed on a platform called Magic School, which is like a big safe sandbox that has some guardrails in it that aligns with Google Classroom, that our teachers can use to safely build AI with really particular targeted applications into student use, " said MacKenzie.

MacKenzie said the integration has been helpful in various ways, from saving teachers time with lesson planning and preparation, to providing language students with real-time feedback on their pronunciation. It has also helped expand accessibility to instructional materials for special education.

Moreover, it has created a foundation for both teachers and students to explore the new technology within an established set of parameters, then debrief how it went. The process has helped hesitant users become more comfortable, said Andrews.

“Having the boundary of knowing where the edge is that you can play in has been really important for staff and faculty, because then when we know where that boundary is, then we can share that with the students,” said Andrews.

In some ways, the process has shifted the traditional classroom dynamic. Teachers are having to learn a rapidly changing technology as they teach their students — a reality that is openly acknowledged by the schools.

“[It is] this idea of, ‘We're going to learn together, and I'm going to facilitate that learning.’ To me, that's where the magic happens,” said Andrews.

According to Andrews, this dynamic has allowed educators to model uncertainty and curiosity in the classroom. By acknowledging their limits, and emphasizing that AI can also have incorrect answers, it invites students to be more active and discerning in the learning process.

“Kids these days, in my opinion, really struggle with how to think for themselves, because there's so much information and noise. I really see the value and the benefit of this learning of AI, because we're teaching them how to think about it and how to use it in their own way,” said Andrews.

As the use of AI becomes more widespread, MacKenzie foresees this structure of curiosity as a critical skill for students to develop, in addition to the characteristics that sets humans apart from technology. As MacKenzie puts it, “AI is no substitute for being a good, thoughtful human that is engaged and interested and interesting.”

“It’s going to be a work in process going forward…[Our] goal is to ready our students to be successful in a world outside of our school, where AI is going to be there, and I think that's the part that I have to take a leap of faith as an administrator,” said MacKenzie.

Taylor Caldwell: 509-433-7276 or taylor@ward.media