Navigating Generative AI in Education: Critical, Curious, and Caring Approaches
by Lydia Watson
It’s been exactly two years since I first began noticing that several CMNS 100 students’ PowerPoint slide decks looked suspiciously the same. Two years since I signed up for my own ChatGPT 3.5 account. Two years since our collective experience as educators began a journey fraught with numerous emotions including disappointment, excitement, anger, curiosity, worry, wonder, sadness, apathy (I know you can add many more emotions to this list)!
Yes, it has been two years since Generative AI became a household word when Open AI released ChatGPT 3.5 as a free large language model available to anyone in the world who had internet access.
And where are we at today?
My guess is that many of you could copy and paste those emotions from the first paragraph here and I am with you. So, I would like to offer a way for us to think about Generative AI in education no matter where we stand with respect to having or not having our students use it: critically, with curiosity, and with care.
Critically
When I say critically, I am borrowing Maha Bali’s approach here which focuses on critical thinking, as in skepticism and questioning and critical pedagogy focusing on social justice dimensions and inequalities something may exacerbate, reproduce or create (Bali, M. 2023). Maha Bali (2024) writes extensively about this and has created a framework for critical AI literacy. This includes:
- Understanding how it works
- Recognizing inequalities and biases
- Examining ethical issues
- Crafting effective prompts
- Assessing appropriate use
With Curiosity
Try the rhinoceros test (this link shows my conversation with ChatGPT 4.0) – watch how it continues to agree with me) by copying and pasting the prompt: How many r’s does rhinoceros and see if you can “gaslight” AI.
With Care
Since the late days of 2022, one thing remains the same: We are all learning together. Now more than ever, we need to be able to share our experimentation with one another, share our reasons as to why we are or are not choosing to use Gen AI, share our challenges, and our innovations and welcome these from one another whether we are students, staff, or faculty. Perhaps it’s co-creating Gen AI guidelines in your classroom, or asking how Gen AI can support some of the work you are doing or asking for support when you want to know how to use a certain tool. If we proceed with care and without judgement, we are opening the door for further learning and exploration.
As you continue your own journey, I invite you to explore the AI Pedagogy Project. Here, you can explore more critical ways to engage with AI, some assignments that have integrated AI, and a tutorial space where you can try a large language model without signing up for an account. I hope you will share this widely.
True to these principles of being critical, curious, and caring, I’ll share that while I wrote this piece myself, I experimented with Bing Co-pilot for title suggestions – one small step in our collective learning journey.
References
AI Pedagogy Project. (2024). AI Pedagogy Project: A collaborative resource for educators. https://aipedagogy.org/
Bali, M. (2024, February 26). Where are the Crescents in AI? Reflecting Allowed. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducation/2024/02/26/where-are-the-crescents-in-ai/
Bali, M. (2023, April 1st). What I Mean When I Say Critical AI Literacy. Reflecting Allowed. https://blog.mahabali.me/educational-technology-2/what-i-mean-when-i-say-critical-ai-literacy/
Image courtesy of OiMax CC BY 2.0
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