Artificial intelligence is revolutionising classroom learning but will it help or hinder students?

By Jason Om, ABC

Adrian Camm's "digital twin" is uncanny, down to the voice and twitching eyebrows.

The website chatbot means the Melbourne principal can be everywhere all at once, answering parents' questions and signing up new enrolments to his school, Westbourne Grammar.

Mr Camm recorded just 15 minutes of speech for the AI, which cloned his voice and perfected his Australian accent.

It can now converse in 100 different languages he freely admits he can't speak, from Korean to Ukrainian.

"I have created a version of myself that can scale my impact," he told 7.30. "An AI avatar enables me to communicate beyond the school day."

"We're open and transparent about our uses of AI."

When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, independent school Westbourne Grammar embraced it, just as some state education departments around Australia began moving to ban its application in public schools.

Programs like ChatGPT can write essays with little instruction from users, which has educators around the world concerned about the risk of cheating.

"I don't think banning is ever the solution," Mr Camm said.

"If schools aren't the ones teaching students about the safe, effective and ethical uses of this technology, then who is?"

Westbourne Grammar has a long list of AI programs it uses, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Canva AI.

With a few commands, students from Year 5 up can produce video games, interact with AI avatars, and generate AI art.

The school told 7.30 it vets such programs to ensure they are appropriate under its own guidelines.

Year 7 student, Ishana, has been asked to use AI to create something that doesn't exist in real life.

She types in "create a shark wearing a pink tutu riding a surfboard".

It takes mere seconds before numerous different images appear on her screen, and she is able to print off a copy of the one she likes.

But why not draw or paint it herself?

"Not everyone has the ability or skills to do something like this," she told 7.30.

"But having access to a laptop can allow you to be able to do all of this regardless of your age or how much you know."

Will AI stop students thinking for themselves?

AI is raising profound questions about how it is affecting the way we think.

A recent MIT study compared brain activity between essay writers who used AI, search engines or just their brains, finding that "brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks" while those who used AI "displayed the weakest connectivity".

So, will AI foster a generation of lazy thinkers?

The question has Jake Renzella, a computer science lecturer at UNSW, worried.

"The real concern here is, are we outsourcing the learning when we ask students to do work with these tools?" Mr Renzella told 7.30.

"The way the brain actually works when we are using these tools is changing. We can bundle this all up in a term called over-reliance. Are students relying too much on these technologies?"

Reading, writing and AI prompting

For more than 40 years, computers have been classroom disruptors, but now the AI revolution is well advanced, with some state public schools trialling their own approved versions of AI software.

In New South Wales, 50 public schools have been using a program called EduChat since early 2024.

EduChat is based on models from the creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI, but draws on the NSW syllabus, and most importantly for schools, does not provide answers or write essays for students like its commercial counterpart.

The program pushes back enthusiastically if it is asked to do the work for them: "I can't write an essay for you, but I can help you get started on your own!"

Year 11 English students at Plumpton High School in Western Sydney have been learning how to prompt the AI with their own questions about Shakespeare's Othello.

They write their essays by hand and then ask the AI how they can make their writing better.

According to their teacher, Katherine Gonzaga, they've gone from writing 800 words in 40 minutes to up to 1,500 words in the same amount of time.

"[Their vocabulary] has become more sophisticated and more critical and more evaluative," Ms Gonzaga told 7.30.

"It's really answering the [essay] question to a tee rather than fluffing around."

Plumpton High students told 7.30 the AI helped their learning.

"It's in no way taking over our thinking, but rather pushing us to improve literacy skills," one student, Annacemone said.

Another student, Roma, insisted students were still using their brains.

"I'm just scared that if AI does take over and we're not able to adapt that we could lose our critical thinking; that's where EduChat helps, it builds our critical thinking."

EduChat 'safe' but still hallucinates

All Australian schools are expected to follow national guidelines, known as the Australian Framework for Generative Artificial Intelligence in Schools, which allow them to use AI but in an ethical and appropriate way.

"We call it safe AI because if you're using EduChat the data stays within the department's system," deputy secretary of the NSW Education Department, Martin Graham, told 7.30.

"It's not going to provide you with any inappropriate information or expose you to things that are not appropriate for a student."

But like any AI, he conceded, it 'hallucinates', a technical term for speaking gibberish.

Teachers and students in the trial have been told to expect errors in the AI and to interrogate them.

"We've had almost a billion words through the product and you can absolutely say that some of them will not have been completely accurate in the same way that any AI is not completely accurate," Mr Graham said.

"We do everything we can to minimise that."

Will AI ever replace teachers?

AI programs like EduChat can provide instant feedback to individual students in a large class while a human teacher cannot.

But if AI is smarter, faster, and more productive, then where does that leave the profession?

Teachers aren't going anywhere, according to assistant principal at Chatswood Public School, Isobel McLoughlin, who's been teaching her Year 5's how to use EduChat.

"We can ask AI to do all sorts of things, but it will never know if they've missed breakfast, it will never understand if they really struggled with the curriculum, or if they just need a bit of extra time to catch up," she told 7.30.

"I think that students and children, even adults, we still look to [human] relationships for understanding."

Mr Graham said the department had no plans to replace teachers with AI.

- ABC