by Nate Green & Kelly Enright
As educators, we know that students acquire information and develop skills in different ways and at different times; it’s one of the most challenging things about teaching. That’s why we believe in the power of differentiating our content and activities to better reach all of our students. By differentiation we mean designing diverse lessons and activities to reach students that start at different levels of understanding and come to know in different ways. When students easily access material and share their learning, it increases their confidence, engagement, and retention. AI provides a unique breakthrough on our quest to design deeper, more personalized learning experiences to reach all learners.
This article shares suggestions and prompts that have dramatically enhanced our teaching and our student’s learning. Using AI in the ways described below also creates more class time to connect deeply with students so we can learn as whole people.
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| image from Dall-E |
We want to be clear at the outset that AI outputs are not synonymous with learning. While AI can generate differentiated and personalized lesson plans and assignments (as we detail below), they aren’t effective–pedagogically speaking–unless they are tinkered with and delivered by a teacher that knows their students' needs and their curricular goals.
We believe teachers should design AI prompts to deliver immediate, actionable feedback to meet the needs of an individual student no matter where they are in terms of content knowledge and skill development. But this feedback won’t land without skillful facilitation by a teacher seeking to make learning stick and hone transferable skills.
AI for Scaffolding Instructional Materials
One of our favorite prompts is to input an activity or formative assessment and ask AI to create multiple versions of the activity for students at different levels of understanding. AI will generate multiple activities at various levels on the depth of knowledge framework, Common Core standards, or with standards from your own class. Differentiation is at the heart of good teaching; it creates a way for all students to access the same content at an appropriate level so that all students can enter the classroom conversation.
AI for Tutoring Students
Perhaps the most famous prompt for personalization is Ethan Mollick’s tutor prompt. This prompt transforms an AI model into a tutor that asks open-ended questions that are tailored to the learner’s understanding of the content and provides examples and analogies to help make the learning stick. Many educational technology companies like Magic School, SchoolAI, and Flint have deployed similar prompts and added dashboards where teachers can assign an AI tutor and also see what students are learning and what they are struggling with. This prompt levels the playing field so that no matter what the circumstances, all students have the opportunity for individual tutoring to engage with the content in ways that connect to their lives and their level of understanding. Furthermore, curious students can access a tutor to further explore course topics, or try to learn something entirely new.
AI for Accessible Resources
When teachers assign challenging readings, AI transforms into a “text-leveler” to make it easier for all students to understand a challenging topic rather than just the students with larger vocabularies and stronger reading comprehension skills. AI can also connect challenging concepts to a student’s life with a real world scenario or example, which helps students understand and retain tough topics. Additionally, when teachers introduce their most difficult topics, it takes only seconds for an AI to generate a number of analogies to help the teacher explain it in more unique and relatable ways. Teachers can ask for analogies that will make the most sense to their students based on the curriculum, their age, their geography, or their values.
Another way for teachers to assess and improve comprehension is to use AI tools to ask questions and provide feedback (much like the tutor prompt above). One app we love, Sherpa Labs, leverages AI to ask and assess comprehension questions in a conversational style with the students. Students respond verbally and receive feedback in real-time about how well they understood the reading. This application has helped us support our students who like to discuss but can struggle putting thoughts into writing. When students arrive to class after having conversed extensively about the reading, it leads to better classroom conversations and in-person interactions. Additionally, students can input their own writing and converse with the AI to better articulate their thoughts in preparation for a discussion or a presentation.
AI for Multimedia
With the introduction of multimodal AI applications, teachers can share information in multiple ways from image, to audio, to video. In addition, teachers can have students showcase their learning in a variety of formats where they can feel more confident expressing their understanding. For example, when explaining a challenging concept, teachers can use image generators to help students visually recall information.
Similarly, OtterAI can transcribe a conversation, a lecture, or a YouTube video, which can help students take notes or revisit course content with the help of a text readout. This process greatly benefits students who like to see course content in writing rather than hear it in lecture. It allows students to process content in their own way, at their own time, and as many times as needed.
We hope these suggestions help teachers ignore the AI hype and focus on honing the strategies that have delivered great teaching and learning for years–differentiation and personalization. A teacher’s role is to ensure that the classroom is a place where all students have access and retain content and demonstrate their learning in multiple ways. Great facilitators ensure that students are engaging with the material and gaining knowledge. When used well, AI can help teachers and students right now. When students feel like they are seen and supported in ways that work for them, it engenders a sense of self-efficacy. Self efficacy builds engagement, confidence, and, in turn, fulfillment. When students are comfortable with learning and excited to share their learning, their whole self shines through, and this brings deeper learning to our classrooms, and a more constructive culture to our learning communities. AI can help us do that now. Why wait?
