Key points:
If you are old enough, you remember it well. The flimsy blue book handed out as you walked through the door to a college exam. The little blue book’s job was to assess not only what you remembered, but how well you could organize your thoughts, construct a coherent argument and keep your handwriting legible in the time allotted. And with an aching hand, you passed the blue book back and walked out, wondering if it was enough. With no easy edits, delete keys, or copy and paste, the blue book was truly an exercise in thinking on your feet.
Fast forward to today, where we can access all the information we could ever need from the device in our pocket. AI can answer questions for us, organize information, structure arguments, and assess the quality of supporting statements. AI can construct an argument and show its thinking. AI can remove unnecessary or time-consuming tasks from our plates.
The upside of this is obvious and one of the reasons we turn to AI daily. The less apparent downside is that frequently outsourcing cognitive tasks to AI prevents us from deep, analytical thinking. Our recall is weakened because we aren’t connecting concepts in our brains. We have less ownership in our work because the thoughts and the arguments aren’t our own. Research shows that the overuse of technology causes a loss of critical thinking skills, which researchers call cognitive debt.
What role should education play in helping students develop critical thinking skills, analyze information and structure their own arguments and opinions? This is mentally exhausting work that many students would prefer to avoid, especially when AI can deliver a grammatically correct essay for them. How do we get learners to put their brains to the test as they learn to think critically on their feet when AI is in their pocket?
Education helps develop our cognitive muscles. Letting AI do it for us is not the answer, but could AI be a thought partner to help build this skill? Could we be teaching students about prompt engineering so AI can help them find holes in the arguments? Consider different viewpoints? Write for different audiences? Does removing the human element from pair work let students be more vulnerable, share, and get feedback that grows them as critical thinkers? Used strategically, could it prepare them for the moment they are handed that blue book and are alone with their mind and a pen to draft their response?
This is perhaps where the evolution of “show your work” lies. Teachers ask students to show their work to prevent cheating and also to understand students’ thinking. Students can (and should) still show their work in the age of AI, but it might look a little different. It could mean showing their questioning process with an AI bot or explaining how they used AI to develop their thinking. In this model, AI isn’t a tool students use to cheat, but is an amplifier of their cognitive growth instead.
AI can be a powerful tool in making learning accessible to all students. AI can help a teacher understand the challenges a particular student might face and proactively address them. AI can adapt content to students’ needs, leveling reading and assignments to meet students where they are. Features like text-to-speech, speech-to-text, real-time transcription, and translation tools break down barriers and allow all students access to the learning.
Teachers can leverage AI for personalized academic support, supporting learners when human tutors aren’t available due to location, time of day, or area of expertise. AI bots can identify learner misconceptions and develop personalized learning plans with real time feedback to help get learners back on track and working at the level of their peers. AI also allows students to connect learning to their individual passions. LLMs provide access to more knowledge than any single human can, allowing students to dive into areas that interest them and use their critical thinking skills to make connections to what they are learning in the classroom.
As we teach students how to use AI to develop their thinking, we must also help learners develop strong digital literacy skills. This includes understanding the ethical implications of AI, including data privacy, responsible use and human oversight. Students need to understand where AI data comes from, what algorithm bias is, and how AI can perpetuate misinformation. This knowledge will help students work alongside AI and highlights the importance of human skills such as empathy, judgment, creativity, and cross-cultural collaboration.
The shift from the solitary struggle of the “little blue book” to the pervasive presence of AI is today’s education challenge. Meaningful implementation of AI is not just a consideration of how it could allow cheating, but what workplace skills students need and how we make sure they develop them in the age of AI. Maybe the answer is the return of the blue book, but more likely it is a repositioning of the role AI plays in education and in our daily lives, where instead of reducing our cognitive workload, it works beside us, pushing our thinking and developing a generation of learners who have used AI for cognitive gain.
Kris Astle, SMART Technologies
Kris Astle is an Education Strategist with SMART Technologies.
Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)
