#479 – The AI Teaching Dividend (Part II: Brookings AI Study—Benefits)

#479 — The AI Teaching Dividend (Part II: Brookings AI Study—Benefits)

AVID Open Access
13 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 0:00 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. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:15 The topic of today’s episode is the AI Teaching Dividend (Part Two: Brookings AI study—benefits).

Paul Beckermann 0:25 Last week was the first episode in our four-part series taking a look at the new study released by the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, titled “A New Direction for Students in an AI World: Prosper, Prepare, Protect.” In last week’s episode, we took a look at the overall scope and intent of the study, which is essentially to identify potential risks and challenges associated with integrating AI into K-12 education, and then to suggest action steps that can both mitigate those risks and also channel the use of AI in positive, productive directions.

Paul Beckermann 0:59 In the setup to the report, the authors describe two potential outcomes for integrating AI in the classroom: AI-enriched learning and AI-diminished learning. On the one hand, AI can enrich and strengthen learning if it’s deployed as part of an overall pedagogically sound approach. AI-diminished learning, on the other hand, can occur when there is an over-reliance on AI tools and platforms. This over-reliance has the potential to negatively impact the learning, emotional well-being, and safety of students.

We’ll get to the risks next week, but in today’s episode, I’m going to take a closer look at the potential benefits for both teachers and students. In a broad sense, teachers benefit most by using generative AI to increase productivity and replace time-consuming routine tasks—things like lesson planning, grading, assignment design, and administrative work.

This frees up their time, which can be reallocated to what the report calls “high-yield activities”—tasks such as offering differentiated support, providing individualized feedback, and building student relationships. For students, AI is beneficial when it offers potentially personalized learning opportunities. This might be through the use of adaptive learning platforms, writing tools, or tutoring programs. With this broader context in mind, the report lists six more specific benefits. Let me outline those right now.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 2:25 Let’s count it. Let’s count it. Let’s count it down.

Paul Beckermann 2:29 Benefit number one: AI can improve equity by addressing educational resource gaps and expanding access to education. The resource gaps alluded to here include things like staff shortages, budget shortfalls, and even knowledge gaps. In the case of staff shortages, generative AI chatbots won’t replace teachers, but they can give additional and improved access to feedback and learning interactions for students who would otherwise have limited or no guidance.

For students in underdeveloped countries, this might mean gaining some kind of access when they had none at all. In our American system, it might look more like students getting AI tutoring in classrooms that are overcrowded, or when teachers don’t have the time or capacity to provide that one-on-one assistance to their students—at least to the degree to which they would like. Another added equity benefit is that, at least for now, many of the generative AI resources provide a free tier of their product, making it financially accessible to anyone with an internet connection and an environment where the website is allowed to be accessed.

Paul Beckermann 3:34 Benefit number two: AI can optimize teacher time for greater focus on students. Time is constantly at a premium for teachers, so this one makes a lot of sense. The teachers surveyed in this study said they use AI primarily for automating tasks that take them a lot of time. This includes tasks like responding to a parent email, grading and providing feedback, translating materials, and creating worksheets, rubrics, quizzes, and lesson plans. In some cases, it meant using AI to help grade essays and to help tutor students.

The report cites studies that show teacher productivity gains to be both significant and measurable. In lesson planning alone, teachers experienced a 31% reduction in planning time, saving them an average of 25 minutes per week. Results also indicate that this efficiency gain did not compromise quality, and the AI- versus human-generated content was essentially indistinguishable. A related survey conducted by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation reported that teachers using AI saved an average of 5.9 hours per week.

This improved efficiency has several important benefits. First of all, the time saved by using AI allows teachers to reallocate that time from low-impact tasks to high-impact tasks. This means having more time to work directly supporting students rather than spending time on those administrative or teacher-centric tasks. It could also include spending more time on relationship building, progress monitoring, giving feedback, and providing personalized instructional support.

In addition to these classroom benefits, the study also found that the ability for AI to help reduce teacher workload had the potential to improve teacher retention. This has the potential of alleviating the high teacher attrition rate and related teacher shortages that we’re seeing in many places. The one caveat offered in regards to this benefit is that the time savings and improved efficiency will only remain a benefit if teacher workloads remain steady. If systems see that teachers have gained more time and then add additional responsibilities in their place, any benefit will be negated.

Paul Beckermann 5:49 Benefit three: AI can improve student learning. This is a big one, since student learning is an essential mission for schools. The report suggests that AI applications, when implemented in pedagogically and developmentally appropriate ways, can meaningfully enhance student learning outcomes. Several example areas are described in the report.

One points out that when AI features like quizzes and question-and-answer opportunities are embedded into other resources like textbooks, learning improves. Initial research also shows promise in using AI to improve literacy instruction, especially for students who are learning English as an additional language.

In the area of writing, where teachers may be nervous that students will simply allow the AI to do the work for them, there are three potential areas of benefits that are outlined. One is in process-based writing support, where the AI guides and assists students through the process of writing. Students say they feel more motivated, more empowered, and less self-conscious about their writing when guided by the AI.

The AI is able to assist with every step in the writing process, from idea generation through drafting and editing to polishing the final draft. Perhaps the greatest impact AI has had in this area is that it can provide personalized and immediate feedback. The study cites John Hattie’s research showing the impressive positive impact that feedback can have on student success.

Paul Beckermann 7:18 Benefit number four: AI can tailor learning to each student’s needs. This benefit can be summarized in two parts: personalized learning programs and intelligent tutoring systems. In regards to personalized learning systems, AI is making this much more of a reality because AI can tailor instruction specifically to each learner; it can adapt in real-time to what the student needs. Teachers have done this for years when they can sit down one-on-one with students, but large class sizes and time constraints often make this one-on-one approach unrealistic.

Generative AI has the ability to be an assistant in the classroom and help to provide more of this personalized attention. The second part of this is the intelligent tutoring systems. Research has consistently shown that high-dosage tutoring can positively impact student learning. Again, the challenge is teacher capacity. This type of tutoring takes a lot of time—something teachers just don’t have.

Benjamin Bloom is famous for calling this out as the “two sigma problem,” which essentially states that students receiving one-on-one tutoring score two standard deviations higher than those without tutoring. The problem was making such intensive support scalable and economically feasible. AI has the potential to solve that problem by making the tutoring experience cost-effective and accessible to all students.

While most of the research revolves around older, rules-based feedback models, there’s excitement about how generative AI might take this to the next level. Early studies are supporting this approach, with students receiving AI tutoring demonstrating significantly higher learning gains in less time than those in active learning classrooms. The report also suggests that the most effective feedback model is a human-AI collaboration model, which leverages the strengths of human interactions and the efficiency of AI.

Paul Beckermann 9:17 Benefit number five: AI can extend learning to neurodivergent students and students with disabilities. For this benefit, the author writes: “Since most schools are designed for neurotypical children, neurodivergent students, such as those with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and autism, are often left out.”

For these learners, AI can make assistive technology more accessible and effective, and early research has indicated that AI-powered applications can appeal to individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Studies have shown that AI applications can significantly help students with dyslexia as well, and AI continues to power up assistive technology tools—things like screen readers, voice-to-text, text-to-speech, alt-text generators, closed captions, and other communication aids.

Paul Beckermann 10:06 Benefit six: AI can advance assessment. Teachers often worry about students using AI to cheat on assessments. This is a real issue, and it needs to be addressed. Still, AI poses some potentially positive opportunities in the area of assessment as well. Specifically, the report suggests that AI can positively transform assessment in three areas: automation, effectiveness, and expansiveness.

Automation of assessments is described as one of the most promising benefits provided by AI in education. AI can make assessment more cost-effective in terms of both creation and scoring. It enables very quick turnaround, providing immediate and granular feedback. And believe it or not, automated systems tend to score student work more accurately and reliably.

In the areas of effectiveness and expansiveness, AI is transforming and expanding what assessment can measure and how it measures it. The authors state, “AI enables entirely new forms of formative, process-based, multimodal assessments that analyze students’ work as they progress through the learning tasks, tracking a wider range of competencies than traditional approaches allow.”

In addition to these already specified benefits, AI has shown great promise in being able to predict which students are potentially at risk and provide interventions to minimize future struggles. Not only can AI help us identify these students, but it can also help us generate the interventions needed to bring them back on track.

Paul Beckermann 11:40 So, these are six potential benefits outlined in the report. The ideas are exciting and offer potentially transformational impacts on students, teachers, and the educational system as a whole. While there’s plenty to get excited about, there are also concerns. Tune in next week as I dive into that section of the Brookings study: the risks posed by AI if it is overused with no guardrails.

Paul Beckermann 12:08 To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit avidopenaccess.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the 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.