Respondents consisted of 106 students and 21 teachers
Teachers were asked on a scale from 1-10 (1 being never and 10 being the majority of the time) on how often they use AI inside the classroom
Rother Program Instructor Maralee Shirley commented on her use of AI inside the classroom and if she approves of it.
“I manage students and I have to take all of the teachers on level curriculum, and I have to modify it to a level that is applicable for my students,” Shirley said. “If I didn’t have AI, there would be no way possible for me to get all that modified within a reasonable amount of time, but I have to be careful to fact check even the AI, because sometimes it puts in erroneous answers.”
Shirley had been using ChatGPT since last year and has seen both sides of AI used in education.
“Yes and no,” Shirley said. “I think it’s great for what I’m using it for, but, like I said, I even have to fact check it myself, because it doesn’t always create the most reliable documents. I think it can be good for students in the forms of using it to make study notes or to summarize something if you’re having trouble understanding it, but it has been used to answer questions that we give our peer mentors, and so they’ve gotten zeros for trying to use it to fill out questions on a test or on their articles review they don’t think we check.”
Though she considers both aspects, the majority of the time she doesn’t approve of it.
“I would say I wouldn’t approve of it,” Shirley said. “I think you still need to learn how to think on your own and write on your own and use your own words to create documents.”
65 out of 106 students use AI as a study tool
29 out of 106 students use AI the majority of the time for assistance in math
In a poll of 106 students, 30 students said they use AI the majority of the time to help with studying.
“AI can change education by making it easier for students to study and learn things or review things that teachers may have already taught, but in a different way,” sophomore Jack Taylor said.
Senior Joseph Zacharias explained how he saw his friends use AI as a study tool.
“I know it definitely can be useful,” Zacharias said. “I’ve had friends who have used it, for instance, to help explain a math problem that they didn’t understand, or talk them through an idea, or something that happened in history.”
Taylor added that he thought AI makes learning more efficient.
“Instead of learning stuff out of the textbook, AI just gives you the thing right there and it helps you to be able to learn more efficiently,” Taylor said. “If you have a question, you could just look it up and it’s right there.”
Zacharias has seen both positive and negative uses of AI.
“I feel like it seems to have shown up recently are negative, but I think if it’s used positively, it definitely can have a positive impact,” Zacharias said. “But I feel like it’s been seen more recently with, either plagiarism or making like false impressions of people.”
