Sep 30 2024
Software

AI in Education in 2024: Educators Express Mixed Feelings on the Technology’s Future

There is optimism about artificial intelligence’s productivity gains amid worry about inappropriate student use.

As students settle back into classroom routines for the 2024-2025 school year, K–12 teachers and administrators face a host of pressing issues. Among them: how to navigate the use of artificial intelligence in education.

While AI has been used for some time in educational tools such as Google Classrooms and GoGuardian, the meteoric rise of ChatGPT in November 2022 brought generative AI front and center in the classroom, as students and educators tinkered with its capabilities to figure out how it might assist them.

How best to leverage genAI in the classroom is one of the most important technology questions facing K–12 education. To answer it, school IT professionals can review a snapshot of recent research on AI to make sense of this compelling technology.

DISCOVER: Integrate artificial intelligence with K–12 learning objectives.

Optimism for AI in Education Is Tinged with Hesitancy

In general, education leaders have an optimistic opinion of AI. The Consortium for School Networking’s State of EdTech District Leadership report notes that 97% see benefits in how AI can positively impact education. While there is great optimism, districts lag in actually implementing AI, with only 35% stating that they have a generative AI initiative in place.

This discrepancy between positive opinions about AI versus active implementation of the technology is reflected in Carnegie Learning’s The State of AI in Education report. In this survey of educators, 77% of respondents think AI is useful, but only 56% are actually using it.

This hesitancy in committing to AI suggests K–12 education leaders are taking a wait-and-see approach to this new technology.

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Another driver of AI reluctance may be a lack of familiarity with the technology. In Microsoft’s AI in Education report, 68% of educators say they have used AI once or twice, while 22% use it daily. However, only 24% claim a strong familiarity with AI.

Most educators in this survey may be trying to develop a better understanding of how the emerging technology could be applied to their administrative and classroom tasks.

AI Benefits Productivity and Differentiated Learning

Between managing the classroom, grading assignments, planning lessons, communicating with parents and families, and meeting administrative requirements, teachers are stretched thin as they strive to meet all of their occupational demands. Generative AI is well suited to address these pressing teacher needs.

According to Carnegie Learning, teachers who use AI are finding multiple benefits from doing so:

  • 42% found that using AI reduced the time spent on administrative tasks.
  • 25% reported benefits in AI’s ability to assist with personalized learning.
  • 18% reported benefits related to improving student engagement.
  • 17% noted AI benefits in enhancing student learning outcomes.

Notably, only 1% of respondents found no benefit to using AI in the classroom.

WATCH NOW: Modern classroom technologies improve K–12 student engagement.

Looking at the particular tasks where AI has been applied, the majority of Carnegie Learning respondents (52%) are using the technology for brainstorming and idea generation. Others use it to create teaching materials, plan lessons or grade assignments.

Overall gains in productivity and personalized learning were reflected in both the CoSN and Microsoft reports. Among Microsoft’s respondents, 24% used AI to update lesson plans, supporting materials and assignments.

Biggest Concerns Include Training on AI and Student Cheating

While educators have found valuable upsides to using AI, they are also concerned about the technology. When CoSN asked them about AI’s biggest risks, 63% worried about new forms of cyberattacks, and 49% cited a lack of teacher training for integrating AI into instruction. Concerns about training and classroom integration were high among Microsoft respondents as well, with 50% seeing a lack of training and support as the biggest challenge.

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The most widespread concerns by far among Microsoft and Carnegie Learning educators, however, were related to student cheating and plagiarism.

This worry is not lost on CoSN educators, with 20% of respondents saying that they worked in districts that use tools to detect AI-generated answers in student work. Clearly, this is a leading concern for educators that includes a thorny patch of ethical considerations with no easy answers.

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