Developing Classroom AI Rules & Guidelines

In today’s episode, we'll explore ideas for creating AI rules and guidelines at the classroom level. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

#299 – Developing Classroom AI Rules and Guidelines

10 min
AVID Open Access

Paul Beckermann  0:01  

Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I'm your host, Paul Beckermann. 

Student  0:06  

Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? What's in the toolkit? Check it out. 

Paul Beckermann  0:17  

The topic of today's episode is Developing Classroom AI Rules and Guidelines. In the previous episode of Tech Talk for Teachers, I shared some ideas and resources to help schools and districts write and implement policies for artificial intelligence. Today, I'm going to put my teacher hat on and share some ideas for creating AI rules and guidelines at the classroom level. To begin with, I suggest leveraging the work of the school and district. Not only can this save you a lot of time, but it'll also ensure that your classroom expectations are in alignment with the broader guidance from your school or district. Here are a few action steps you may want to pursue before writing your own AI rules. 

Student  0:59  

Here is your list of tips. 

Paul Beckermann  1:03  

Number one, find and read the school policies. You know, policies aren't very exciting, but they exist for a reason. They're intended to offer guidance to district stakeholders like us, and help to form coherent actions around the topic. In this case, AI. Be sure you know what your school and district policy says, and then stay aligned to it. 

Number two, encourage schoolwide collaboration. Instead of trying to do this on your own, leverage the insights and ideas of your colleagues. They may have experiences that you don't have, and together, you can pool your ideas together to develop even stronger guidelines. Plus, if there's consistency among teachers in a school, the expectations will be easier to put into effect. Students will quickly learn when all of their teachers expect the same set of behaviors. Consistency is always a good thing to help this get started, you might want to talk to your principal to see if building leadership can help facilitate this type of sharing. This might mean carving out time during a staff meeting, or perhaps suggesting a special meeting or a block of time during building staff development day. 

Number three, generate department and grade level consistency. Even if your school does not adopt consistent expectations, you can still work with your more immediate grade level or department teams. This can have a similar impact to school rules. Students will quickly learn that all teachers in a grade level or department have the same expectations. Next, you want to fine tune policy at the classroom level. If you're able to rely on a framework of schoolwide or team expectations, that's ideal. But if you're not, you'll need to create your own classroom guidance. While you can generate these expectations on your own and then present them to your students, it can be more impactful to have students help you develop these classroom rules and guidelines. And even if you do present the rules to them, students can help to define what those rules mean in action by generating a list of specific examples for your classroom. Here are some resources that you can leverage to help you in this process. 

Student  3:08  

What are some cool tech tools I can use. Tool tips! Instructional technology.

Paul Beckermann  3:16  

The first one is a T-chart or a Y-chart. I love these tools, they're graphic organizers that can help structure input from students. You can use it to record student descriptions of what AI acceptable use looks like, sounds like, and feels like, as well as what it doesn't look like, sound like, and feel like. You can then hang these agreements in the classroom as visual reminders of what the class discussed. The descriptions are meaningful and actionable because they're anchored in input from the students and provide specific examples that turn policy and expectations into identifiable actions and practice. 

Number two, Red, Yellow, and Green Light models the blog Teacher Directed AI suggests a traffic light system to let students know what's allowed and when. In this model, a red light means that no AI is allowed on a particular activity. A yellow light means that access to generative AI is assumed, but probably not required, and a green light indicates that AI is expected to be used for a learning activity. Teachers who choose to use this approach usually develop a method of posting a stoplight for each learning activity. Some hang laminated stop lights on their front board. Others use online digital stoplights, like the one available from classroomscreen.com. The free version of that tool offers it really easy to use stoplight that you can project for the class to see. 

Number three, an AI Assessment Scale is an option. Leon Furze, Dr. Mike Perkins, and Dr. Jasper Roe co-authored the creation of an AI Assessment Scale that's more nuanced than the three-tier stoplight approach. Their model has five levels and those are: no AI, ideas and structure, AI editing, AI and human evaluation, and full AI use. A version of this scale can be used with students to help them understand what level of AI is acceptable for a particular learning activity, just like with the stoplight. But because it's more complicated, it might be better to use this one with older students. 

Number four, plagiarism and cheating continuum. So Matt Miller, from Ditch That Textbook, has created a continuum that suggests rethinking what plagiarism and cheating mean in the age of AI. And he's done this as a sliding scale. The scale ranges from work that is fully student created to work that is created fully by bots, or AI chatbots. In between, there's a varying degree of student and AI generated content this scale can be a useful tool in initiating conversations with your students about what constitutes cheating and what is acceptable use of AI as a learning partner. 

Number five, proper citations. To promote digital literacy and responsible AI use, classrooms can lean on guidance about how to properly cite AI generated content. Citations are great because that means a student is acknowledging those are not their own ideas, and they're borrowing input from the AI. Guidance is available in popular citation styles, including MLA, APA, and Chicago Style. 

And number six, AI detection software. While many products on the market claim to be able to detect AI generated content, these tools are largely ineffective and may provide false positive reports. The use of these tools can lead to a never ending gotcha game of cat and mouse, with teachers trying to catch students cheating and students trying to hide their behaviors. To avoid this adversarial kind of situation, the use of detection software is generally discouraged, and they don't work that well anyway. Instead, teachers are encouraged to foster open communication with their students and develop clear and meaningful guidelines for the acceptable use of AI in the classroom. By doing this, we're teaching our students to be responsible digital citizens, and that will help them beyond our classroom. Finally, reference existing guidelines. This might be one of the policies that you developed as a district, school, or team. And seven states currently have developed statewide guidance, California, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, Washington State, and West Virginia. If you live in one of those states, you probably want to lean on those recommendations as well. 

To get you started and save you some time searching, here are some possible content areas that you might want to include in your classroom expectations. The first is an acknowledgement of the school and district expectations. It's okay for students to know that there are larger guidelines. 

Number two, it can be great to include a section about academic integrity that addresses topics like plagiarism, proper citation of AI content, and how AI detection tools will or won't be used in your classroom, and probably why. 

Number three, generate a list of best practices for student use. This can be a great opportunity to address potential pitfalls of AI generated content, things like hallucinations and bias. 

Number four, even if you don't generate this list with students, it can be very helpful to describe specific positive and negative use examples that apply in your classroom. These bring the policy to life. Of course, you don't want to get so locked into the example list that students feel like it's all inclusive. It's important that students know that these are examples and not a complete list. 

And number five, model AI responsible use. It can be really powerful for students to see responsible use in action. This could be during a guided full class activity, or could even be in the form of flip videos that students can access as needed, or maybe in a small group during station rotation. Modeling can go a long way to breaking down misunderstandings, and it can give students a concrete example of what responsible use looks like. 

Ultimately, you'll need to decide what makes sense in your classroom as you work through this process, I encourage you to remember that this is a great opportunity to teach and guide your students how to be responsible digital citizens. By letting them learn and practice these skills in the safety of our classrooms, we're giving them space to grow into digitally responsible adults, and those adults will shape our future world. To learn more about today's topic and explore other free resources, visit AVIDopenaccess.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out our series of four articles about AI policy development. You can find them in the collection AI in the K–12 classroom, or by searching AVIDopenaccess.org for developing district and school AI policy. 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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai