#401 – AI Trust You

#401 — AI Trust You

AVID Open Access
9 min

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Paul Beckermann 0:01 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I’m your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:05 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 The topic of today’s episode is AI, trust you. For many teachers, the first thing they think of when they hear the words artificial intelligence or AI is cheating. How will I know if students have used AI to cheat on this assignment? This is especially true for assignments that require writing. In fact, Stanford University partnered with the Laguna Beach Unified School District to conduct some research on this topic with students and staff in the district.

We had a chance to have a conversation with Michael Morrison, the Chief Technology Officer at Laguna Beach, on our Unpacking Education podcast, and he told us that the Stanford study discovered two disturbing things. One was that kids were feeling guilty about using AI, and the other was that the teachers felt like they were having to catch kids cheating, being police in the classroom.

Michael said to us, “This is the absolute worst culture that I can think of, when you have a lack of trust, transparency, and people are trying to catch you cheating”. “I mean, what a horrible place to live and work”. I tend to agree with them on that comment. Rather than accept this perpetual game of cat and mouse, Michael and the folks at Laguna Beach decided to do something about it.

They worked with an app builder, Andrew Stoneman, who’s also created apps like autoCrat and octopus, to create an AI honesty app called AI trust you. The app’s an add-on that gets installed into Google Docs and is used to facilitate an honest dialog and provide very clear communication about expectations for AI use between student and teacher. Essentially, the teacher uses it to create a description of how AI can be used on an assignment, and the student uses it to describe how and how much they actually did use AI in the completion of their work.

The whole point of the app is to create honest and open communication. Thus, the name AI, trust you. Laguna Beach does say that they don’t intend this to be used for every assignment, but rather the ones where AI is probably most prominently used or more prominent concern. To give you a better idea what this app looks like in action, I’ll walk you through both the teacher and student experience. Let me start with the teacher experience.

The first thing you’ll need to do is install the app. This requires two simple steps. The first is to fill out a quick Google Doc indicating if you’re installing this on your own account, or if you’re installing it district-wide. If you choose the district-wide approach, you’ll have more options for customization, but it’s also a little more involved. I’ll use the personal account in my example, since it’s quicker and very straightforward.

So once you’ve filled out the form, you can install the app, which is available in the Google workplace marketplace. It’s called AI trust you. Click Install, accept a few permissions, and you’re on your way. To access the app, you’ll open the Extensions menu in Google Docs and choose AI trust you from the list, then slide over and select Build AI truth and trust statement. This will open a series of dialog boxes that will give you options to select.

Screen one asks you to indicate if you are a student or a teacher. I click teacher for this example. Then you’ll be asked if students are allowed to use AI on this assignment. I clicked yes. From there, I could check off specific AI applications from a list. Options included popular tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, School AI, Grammarly, and others. There’s a spot at the bottom to add your own if it’s not on the list.

After clicking Next, I was able to indicate how AI was allowed to be used on the assignment. The app breaks this down into four categories of use. Writing, which includes tasks like generate ideas, draft, outline, rephrase, get unstuck, and review or provide feedback. The second category was reading, which includes tasks like simplify, translate, and summarize. The third category is research with options to research, ask AI to make connections, and use AI to create a persona or an expert or historical figure to ask questions. The final category is audio visual with options for creating images, songs, videos, and presentations.

Once you’ve made your selections, you then click Generate truth and trust statement. This creates a list of allowed AI actions that can be copied and pasted into your assignment and then given to students. One extra bonus is that the statements include some very simple suggestions for AI best practices in the category of use that you’ve chosen. For example, if AI is allowed to be used for research, the statement will remind students that AI can be wrong and that they should find at least one additional source that is not AI generated to confirm the content they found. The whole point here is to provide clarity and transparency about what is allowed. No cat and mouse game.

On the student side, the experience is similar. Students install the app and access it in the same way in Google Docs. However, they use it at the end of their work on the assignment to report and explain how they did use AI in the completion of their work. When they open the app, they would indicate that they are a student. They are then asked if they used AI on this assignment. For my example, I clicked yes. Then I was presented with a list of AI tools. I was asked to check off the ones I used.

The next screen is the one that is most different from the teacher experience. It includes a slider and the question, “What percentage of your work did AI help you with?”. This is intended to be an estimate on the student’s part. The next screen asks the student to indicate the ways they used AI in the assignment. It includes the four categories of options that the teacher also reviewed. For my example, I clicked generate ideas and get unstuck from my responses. The app created an honesty statement that I could then copy and paste into my assignment. The teacher can then review this when grading the work. It’s a very simple and straightforward process that promotes an open dialog between student and teacher.

Michael told us that some people were skeptical that students would actually be honest when using this app, but he’s found through internal surveys that students generally have been honest. He’s found that most do want to do the right thing, and this app does what its title suggests. It says to students, “AI trust you to do the right thing”. “This is what’s allowed and what’s not”.

In our conversation with Mike about this, he also said, “this showed us that kids just want to have an opportunity to show integrity, and we just haven’t given them that, that’s the problem”. I think so. Students feel a sense of relief, is what they describe. They’ve told school staff, “I can be honest now, and I can tell my teacher what I did, and I’m not going to get in trouble for it, because I am being honest”. This open communication allows for good conversations between students and teachers. If there are questions about the student work, then that conversation can take place around the statements that both the teacher and the student have posted. It opens up that dialog.

Michael reports that so far, they have had 135,000 installs of the app, and 175 districts are officially using it. If you are interested in exploring this option as well, you can find it by searching the Google workplace marketplace for AI trust you, or you can go to this web address, tinyurl.com/aitrustyou.

To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit avidopenaccess.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the Unpacking Education episode, “AI, trust you with Michael Morrison”. You may also want to explore our article collection, “AI in the K-12 classroom,” and, of course, be sure to join Rena, Winston, and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we’re joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening. Take care and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.