The AI Classroom is Here Now: A Q&A with Sohan Choudhury & Justin Cerenzia

Middle States President Christian Talbot leads a dialogue with Sohan Choudhury, CEO of Flint, an AI platform adopted by renowned schools like Westminster and The Episcopal Academy and shares insights on the transformative use of AI in personalizing student learning. Alongside him, Justin Cerenzia, the Buckley Executive Director for the Center for Teaching & Learning at The Episcopal Academy, brings two decades of educational expertise, emphasizing the fusion of cognitive science principles and meaningful human connections. (Sourced from YouTube description)

The webinar discusses the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education, focusing on its current use, potential benefits, and challenges. 80% of educators report their schools lack clear policies on AI use, with only a small fraction actively using AI tools in classrooms. This indicates both a gap and an opportunity for AI integration in educational settings. Key points include but are not limited to:

1. Potential of AI in enhancing learning (2:09): AI tools, like Flint, are highlighted for their ability to extend learning beyond traditional classroom settings, offering personalized feedback and enabling more interactive and engaging learning experiences.

   • Justin specifically speaks to the ability to use AI tools like Flint for practice testing. This includes facilitating formative assessments without the pressure of grades, thus promoting better learning outcomes.

   • For Justin, Flint was a "game-changer" because it enables teachers to customize and "train up" AI tools.

   • Additionally, Flint looks at the experience of teachers and students together and has built a platform for both. Sohan agrees, saying that Flint is looking beyond using AI as a tool to save time for teachers, especially because purely seeking to save time usually outputs more standardization.

     
     

2. Flint's ability to enable innovative learning in the classroom (8:58): Examples of helping students engage with the language of Shakespeare, helping students with writing and debugging code, getting speaking practice, especially for world languages, etc. Flint is enabling students to get more, low-pressure feedback on their practice and allows for more creative uses of AI. As Justtin describes it, it's not a replacement of teachers, but rather a "forced multiplication" of them.

   
   

3. Challenges and concerns (15:27): The discussion also touches on challenges such as the need for clear guidelines on AI use, the risk of increasing educational inequities, and the importance of ensuring AI tools complement rather than replace traditional teaching methods. Concerns about AI reinforcing outdated learning models and the need for educators to critically evaluate AI-generated content are also addressed.

   
   

4. Future directions of how AI can support great teaching and learning (17:35): The conversation suggests that as AI technology evolves, it could significantly transform educational practices by providing more personalized and effective learning experiences. However, this requires educators to adopt a more experimental and open-minded approach to integrating AI tools into their teaching.

   • Sohan adds (20:58) that Flint's approach to this is to work closely with teachers to enable what they as professional educators are looking to do, rather than just build the shiny and viral features. The Flint team is looking at how AI can solve pre-existing problems of practice, rather than what the technology can do just because it exists.

   • Justin adds a concept introduced by Eric Hudson about how AI is not a tech issue, it's a design issue (23:17)—AI is going to force us to rethink and redesign our teaching methods and experiences. It's already prompted teachers and students to tell Justin that they've been thinking about various subjects from angles they never had considered before.

   • Christian stresses the point that nobody is an expert in the application of generative AI to the world of learning and that the stakes are too high not to dive in and try to figure it out.

   
   

5. Concern of equity and access (26:06): Sohan raises concerns about the digital divide and the potential for AI to exacerbate educational inequities. He emphasizes the importance of making AI tools accessible to all students to ensure equitable learning opportunities.

   
   

6. Concern of "outsourced thinking" (29:53): Christian brings up the concern of AI being so fast and fluent that teachers won't feel the need to spend time scrutinizing the output.

   • Justin says that Flint has actually illuminated a lot of this issue because the Flint feedback that students were getting was aligned with the Flint assessment they had built but wasn't aligned with what teachers had wanted their students to focus on.

   • Sohan adds that what will keep teachers from "falling asleep at the wheel" is student communication. If teachers just use AI to recreate what they did before, student attention spans will only get harder and harder to compete with.

The group also discusses the future of customizability with AI, multimodal applications like video generation, concrete studies or evidence of student learning improvement with AI, and how to even measure the impact of AI. The webinar underscores the transformative potential of AI in education, while also highlighting the need for careful consideration of its implementation to maximize benefits and minimize risks.

Summary adapted from Flint's AI video summary.