Guidelines Are Like Guardrails…

When I first signed up for this course, I thought it would be about creating online programming for students who worked from home or had poor attendance. Yeah, I skimmed the course description. I’m so glad I half-assed my due diligence and didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. I was completely wrong about what I’d be learning. This course has been a transmogrifying experience. I love this new-to-me  word. It means to transform in a surprising or magical manner. I just stumbled upon it while researching for my content catalyst and am trying to get it into conversation whenever I can. Lol. Now I don’t mean to suggest that Dean bewitched me with all his guest speakers and fantastic information, (okay maybe he has), but rather I was surprised how timely the class has been and how it has made me put digital and media literacy to the forefront of my pedagogy. These literacies have not been a focus in my teaching in the past. They have been an after thought unfortunately but they are up there in importance now!

And then, add Alec Couros, who was our guest speaker in week 5, really compounded my interest in digital and media literacies, as well as artificial intelligence (AI). In particular Alec was talking about the use of AI in our classrooms, and it got me thinking, our policy, our guidelines, at my school are non-existent. Last year we had two students that we know about, we used AI to write their essays for a class. I shudder to think of the ones who slipped through the cracks. And of course we came down on them, called them out and made them redo their assignments. In retrospect, yeah, they cheated, but we also created the conditions for that to happen by not having guidelines or policy on the matter. And that’s what really interested me with Alec’s presentation in week 5. What is cheating exactly? And how do you address AI use in your school and classroom?

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. Thankfully Alec shared some slides with us that I took pictures of. In this first picture he shares an image with an arrow that shows Student Created on one end and Bot Created on the other, with 6 different situations falling along that spectrum. I would add a seventh that says, “Student wrote all assignment content on their own, shared it with AI and prompted the AI for suggestions to clarify, improve, and revise, then rewrote and submitted.” It would fall between the first and second one from the bottom. I think once staff have been informed about what AI is, what it can do, what it’s benefits and challenges are, and explored a couple platforms like ChatGPT or MagicSchool, using this graphic would be a great document to initiate the conversation on cheating and plagiarism. It’s not as black and white as we once thought.

 

The follow up to that discussion would have to be creating guidelines for appropriate AI use in the classroom. Again, I refer you to Alec Couros’ presentation. This picture titled, “Can I Use AI on this Assignment?” shows a scale with five levels from no AI use to full AI use, along with the disclosure requirements. I like the detailed explanations of this scale.

And this picture shows a graphic titled “Pathways for AI Use”. I like the use of colour and clean simple images. Perhaps a combination of these documents is what I’m looking for.

And finally, like all good teachers, I begged, borrowed and stole ideas and resources. I reached out to a number of colleagues asking what their divisions are using for AI guidelines. Some colleagues had no idea, while others were very knowledgeable and were able to assist me right away. The following guidelines come from a workshop held in September.

I’m not sure what you have happening in your own division or school but I hope you’re ahead of the curve and have guidelines already in place. If not, time to role up the sleeves and make things happen. That’s what I’m doing. And on a side note, if you have any of the actual slides from Alec’s presentation, please share them. I’d love to trade in my picture of a picture for a bright, sharp, clean looking graphic. Also if anyone has other documents or images of other schools or divisions AI guidelines, share those too.

Oh, and what the heck does any of this have to do with my title? Great question! Guidelines are like guardrails on a winding road; they keep us safe but don’t prevent us from enjoying the ride. Let’s give our students and our teachers some guardrails, so they can enjoy their journey of learning,  without crashing and burning! Wow. That was pretty good. TM! I just trademarked the bold sentence but feel free to use it. Ha!