Technology

How AI Will Change Education

Naomi Caselli and Michael Marani explore the promise and challenges of using AI tools in the classroom

The growth of AI signals some positive opportunities for both students and teachers, including automating tasks such as grading and providing greater access to resources. At the same time, it’s not without significant concerns, including the potential the students will use AI to cheat on assignments or tests. Finding the balance between innovation and ethical and other concerns is at the center of many discussions in schools and districts today.

For this Conversations with the Dean session, Dean Penny Bishop is joined by Naomi Caselli, director of the BU AI & Education Initiative and associate professor of Deaf education at BU Wheelock, and Michael Marani, director of curriculum at Quincy Public Schools. They explore how BU Wheelock and Quincy Public Schools are working together to find proactive and thoughtful ways to incorporate AI in the classroom.

Highlights from the Conversation

Disruption or transformation?

There’s some real concerns, I think that we should be having about how AI and education work together . . . If what we’re trying to do is transform systems of education so that people can thrive, a disruption is a cool opportunity to take a pause and to think about what are our goals here in education . . . and use it as a moment to really be deliberate, and to try and be forward thinking and crafting that future—a future that includes AI in it.

Naomi Caselli

The importance of guardrails

There are students that are using it when they go home, we know this. We certainly don’t want to stand in the way of innovation and a tool that students can use. Yet we also want to understand it ourselves so we can put the guardrails along the age levels of students in an appropriate manner. . . . We’re very much in the learning stage of what the potential impact might be, nobody really knows. It kind of feels like everybody’s waiting for this big shake up, and we don’t know if it’s going to happen all at once or if it’s just going to happen in drips.

Michael Marani

What educators need to know

We have all kinds of human biases . . .  that get kind of baked into these models. And so as we think about how we use them and how kids are using them and how they’re incorporated into schools, I think we need to have some real caution . . . as educators, we need to have real facility in understanding what these patterns are and how they work and how they don’t work, and make sure that we’re not just letting AI save the day here.

Naomi Caselli

Conversations with the Dean are a series of webinars hosted by Dean Bishop that explore some of the most pressing topics in education. Learn more about Conversations with the Dean.