Every student wants to earn an “A.”
Now, some students at Evanston Township High School can also earn an “AI.”
ETHS and Oakton College are about to offer what the schools call a “concurrent enrollment opportunity.” College level classes (three credits apiece) about artificial intelligence will be given at the high school.
Dale Leibforth, high school math department chair, says, “ETHS is the only school in the area getting this amazing opportunity. It’s cutting edge and we have it right here.”
Four different AI courses will be taught by Oakton instructors after school at ETHS, Foundational AI, AI Ethics, Prompt Engineering, and No Code Machine Learning.
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“AI is not magic stuff,” says Ragaa Abdallah, chair of Oakton’s Computer Information Systems Department that’s running the new program.
In fact, for the first three of the four course offerings, you don’t need to be a math or science genius.
This is a “no-coding” approach, which, according to Forbes.com, means tools are taught “that allow anyone to create AI applications without having to get their hands dirty writing technical code. AI can be useful to anyone in just about any job ….”
In fact, other than the for the final Oakton/ETHS class, there are no prerequisites. (The fourth one does require what Adbullah describes as “math maturity.”)
Besides ending up with 12 college credits, students who complete the four courses will also get an Oakton certificate in “Essential Applications of AI” which an Oakton brochure says will give students skills to “leverage AI tools and techniques for problem-solving, data-driven, decision making and ethical AI applications across diverse industries.”
In other words, it can help you get a job,and a pretty good job at that.
The Oakton informational brochure says that in 2023, “the median advertised salary of jobs requiring AI skills in northeastern Illinois was $59.02/hr.”
Plus, one of the key words in the Oakton description is “ethical.”
“Students should know how to use the skills, but do so ethically.” says James Rabchuck, Oakton’s Dean of STEM (science, technology, math and engineering).
“It’s not a thinking tool, but it does have an amazing capacity to synthesize knowledge,” he explains.
Abdallah says those using AI “should be careful to fact check. Generative AI,” she says, “is like a toddler. It can’t filter anything.” There’s no fact-checking when a toddler blurts something out, no matter how cute.
The first course will start later in March, then two over the summer, then the final one in the fall. The classes are all free, thanks to an approximately $300,000 state grant to Oakton.
The hope is to continue the program in the future.
There will be an informational session for ETHS students after school at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, at the HUB in the high school building.
Leibforth says the course sequence “opens AI up to everyone. Some may already be heavy duty coders,” while others may not know coding at all.
