Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to FHSU Tilt Talk, a podcast about educational technologies, teaching and learning, scholarly research and service hosted by Teaching, Innovation and Learning Technology.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Staff.
Welcome to our special series where we dive into Generative AI at Fort Hays State University.
In this series, we interview faculty and staff about their work with generative AI, exploring how they've integrated it into their teaching and research.
[00:00:31] Speaker C: Hello, welcome to our Tilt Talk podcast with a focus on AI and my name is Gary Anderson. I'm an associate professor in the AEP Department at Forte State and welcome you and I'll let my colleagues introduce themselves.
[00:00:55] Speaker D: Hi everyone, I'm Janet Stramel. I'm a professor in the Department of Teaching.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: And I am Magdalene Moi. I'm an instructional technologist in teaching innovations and learning technology and our FHSU Generative AI Task Force Chair. Today, Janet is joining us to let us to tell us a little bit about what she's been doing with AI in her courses. Janet, would you start and tell us a little about the context that you've been using it in and how you've been using it?
[00:01:27] Speaker D: Sure. I teach free service teachers.
I teach mathematics methods for early childhood, unified teacher education candidates, elementary candidates, and middle school mathematics teacher education candidates. And I first started introducing them to AI writing lesson plans. I know teachers are busy. They're going to look up online ideas for teaching a particular subject. So I introduced using AI to them. At first they thought they were cheating and then I said no, it's a place to start. You do have to make the lesson plan your own, but you can also it gives you an idea of an activity or a task to use.
And so that's where I started.
I use it to write my own lesson plans. It does help students as they're trying to make adaptations or modifications for students with special needs.
It also helps the students create assessments. As I said, teachers are busy and they're going to look up things online, so why not help them use the tools that are available to them.
[00:02:54] Speaker C: After they got over the idea of it being cheating? How have your students kind of started to respond to this? The use of this tool in it sounds like you're using it in differentiating instruction.
How have they responded to this? Now that they're into it.
[00:03:16] Speaker D: Some are embracing it, some are not.
I have asked them to cite the website they're using, whether it's Chat, GPT, or some of the other ones. I don't see many of those in the citations, but I know some are using it and it's helping them.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Are they worried about Like, I mean cheating is such an interesting focus because they're pre service teachers. Right. So are they concerned about like, well, if I can use it, then my K12 students can use it. Have they shared any of that kind of reflection with you?
[00:04:02] Speaker D: They have not. Because they're especially the early childhood and the elementary majors. I don't think that they've thought that far ahead yet. That there's their own second grade students would use it. The middle school math people have not really talked about it yet, but that's something I do need to ask them about.
But we know students are using technology and so why not teach them to use it appropriately?
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I know from my own K12 experience the each district is so different with what they allow in their classroom. With technology isn't like YouTube access. Yes or no. So it'll be. I would love to know what your pre service teachers come back with because it would be very different district to district.
[00:04:57] Speaker D: I kind of compare it to when calculators first came out and everyone could afford to buy a calculator.
We all thought that, oh no, students will not learn their multiplication facts. They won't learn those basic addition and subtraction facts because they'll always have a calculator with them. And research has shown that they do learn those facts even if they have a calculator. I kind of see it as that we need to teach our students how to use it and to use it ethically and appropriately.
[00:05:33] Speaker C: That's interesting.
So the quality of what you get in AI often depends on the quality of your prompt that you put in. And what are you doing in that regards and what are you seeing about the quality of what the students actually get out from AI?
[00:05:57] Speaker D: Well, I actually did it in class and even with my virtual students. When I did my recording of class for that week, I said, okay, I'm going to put this prompt in chat GPT write a 4th grade math lesson on adding fractions with like denominators and that's all I put in the the prompt section. And so it generated it within seconds. And then we went through and looked at that lesson plan and said, oh well, this needs to be changed. That does this align to the standard? So then we revised that prompt to say to align with the Kansas mathematics standards. And then we did another revision revise to include students with diverse needs. And then we had to revise that to include a student with adhd. And so we kept doing those revisions so they could see that just like when you type something into Google Sometimes your first question doesn't give you the results you want, so you have to revise that.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: I'm really interested because you, I mean, we've talked to a couple faculty now who have modeled for their students how to use it. But since you all, you did this for your online students, I want to kind of dive into that a little bit deeper. Like, so you recorded yourself doing it, you shared it with your students and then did you facilitate a discussion around it or how did that work?
[00:07:35] Speaker D: I did. Because our online students are anywhere in the world, you know, it needs to be asynchronous discussion. So I, I did, I recorded that same kind of lesson for them, put it in blackboard. And then one of the prompts in the assignment that week and the discussion board was talk about how, how you use this. Then to write your own lesson plan and cite that.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: How did that discussion go? Were they, how do you feel that discussion went? Were they engaged?
Go ahead.
[00:08:15] Speaker D: It went really well. Kind of like the on campus students. They thought that they were cheating.
They thought that it wasn't appropriate.
Some wanted to go ahead and just write the, the Fortes education lesson plan and do it on their own. And I, you know, I said that is fine, you can do that, but use those tools to help you.
I don't see it any different as doing a Google search.
It just helps them with an idea, refine their ideas.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: Back to generating, you know, quality information. I recently went to a conference and they were talking about putting a lot of detailed information about a student, a particular student, into the system so that they could get higher quality differentiation plans. And I'm wondering about how you see your students and actually practicing teachers using that moving forward in the future. And where's the ethical lines about how to use it to get good quality stuff, but not across those ethical lines.
[00:09:49] Speaker D: That's a great question.
I think you're not using student names or you know, any of that data, so it would still be just a general disability or whatever.
And I believe that as we use it, it's learning more so we get better results the more we use it. I think that's true anyway, so I don't, I don't know for sure, but I think if we're not using names and IDs and you know, even where they're from, that it's still a general context.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: Yeah, it could be kind of wide open the possibilities depending on how much information it learns. As we enter more and more information about specific students.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: And of course we have at Fort Hayes we have co pilot and so that data doesn't go into their system the same way that some of the free ChatGPT and some of those other ones kind of do. So that's always kind of a good thing to know, actually. When you said that, Gary, though, I thought how often do our professors differentiate their lessons, you know, for their different students? And that certainly we don't have IEPs the same way a K12 situation might have. But we do have, you know, students with accommodation needs. And I haven't heard yet really any faculty members say like, oh, I use it to differentiate for my own course.
And that would, I think that's a gap. That might be a good professional development thing to kind of move to.
[00:11:43] Speaker C: That's a good point. That this probably could be much more widely used in the post secondary and college level to differentiate.
[00:11:58] Speaker D: I think that's a great idea because we're always wanting to help our students succeed and if they have some special needs and we might not know how to help them, but we do have the tools that can help us help our students.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: Where do you see this going next? Can you see over the horizon a little bit? Where do you want this to go? Maybe. What would you like to try next or experiment with?
[00:12:39] Speaker D: Well, teachers, since I teach pre service teachers, they write letters to parents, they write articles for newsletters that go out to parents. I think that would be a good resource for them as well.
Letters of recommendation.
I, I always say though, to my students and as I use it myself, you know, you get this letter, but then you have to make it your own and, and so you can't just copy and paste and let that be it. It has to still be your own words. You know, there, there might be some words that you would not normally use, so you need to fix that and make it flow. But it does give you a place to start instead of looking at a blank page.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a good point. And your students are obviously going to be searching for jobs soon and so using it as a tool to help them land that job would be a great use for it.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know how much they do it in a K12 setting, but like a teaching philosophy, right? Even like the exercise of having to put out what you believe and will install and foster in your classroom. I think is interesting to see, you know, what kind of conversation you might have with AI to kind of get that to be what you would actually want to share.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Any lessons learned that you would give to teachers out there, either practicing teachers or New teachers. What's your. What's some of your best advice for. For those that might be watching this podcast?
[00:14:35] Speaker D: I still think we need to let people know that we're using AI.
I really do believe they should cite it as just like they would make a note, even if they're just writing their own lesson plan, make a note that I used AI to create this, just as we would cite a website.
So that that's probably the biggest thing that I think we should do.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Any last thoughts on, like, encouraging other faculty to use it in their classrooms? I think educators tend to be. I'm probably biased, but I think we tend to be a little bit more exploratory. Like we want to try something new with our students, see how it works. You know, be afraid to fail in a way that maybe some of the other professors may not be so willing to be so vulnerable with their students. And I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts or kind of suggestions for a math faculty or a, you know, a history faculty member.
[00:15:41] Speaker D: I would just say try it.
Don't be afraid to try.
Try it for yourself and then ask your students to create something using an AI tool and then maybe make some comparisons. But I, I always say just don't be afraid to try it.
[00:16:01] Speaker C: Good advice. I think my very first thing that I tried an experimental way, worked out pretty well. It was just making a rubric, you know, and so teachers can. I mean, that's a pretty safe way to. To start out is just try to make a rubric based on the content that you're teaching and the product or performance that the students are supposed to be generating.
I like that. Just try it.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for joining us, Janet. We really appreciate you sharing your experience with us. If you hear any feedback from your students, I know that there's some uncomfortable tension there with, like, is this cheating and not cheating as they're going into education field, they're definitely concerned about it. And I'd love to know more. Follow up with you later about how maybe they continue using it or other information they might share back with you.
[00:17:03] Speaker D: Well, thank you.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:17:05] Speaker C: Thank you, Janet. And keep us posted on your future explorations.
[00:17:10] Speaker D: I will. Thank you.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to this episode of FHSU Tilt Talk. Subscribe on Spotify, Amazon, and check us out on the TigerLearn blog or the Tilt social media pages for updates, dates. We'll see you next time.
