There's a new child in the classroom, but not everyone is convinced they're playing well. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used in education, and tools like ChatGPT and Bard are top-rated for tasks like planning lessons, creating quizzes, and writing emails and letters.
Outsourcing some of the lesson planning thinking to AI has huge benefits for time-strapped teachers, who can leverage their expertise to fine-tune their plans to the unique classes of students they're teaching. It will look like this.
I have heard that lesson planning using AI is said to reduce the skills of teachers. However, all output from AI tools needs to be viewed with a critical eye, and this requires the expertise of teachers. Is the lesson appropriate for the students in your class? If not, how would you adapt it? Are the teaching strategies suitable for the purpose of the lesson? Are you filling it out correctly?
Will using AI to support lesson planning make teachers less skilled?
As an example, we asked ChatGPT to create a lesson plan using the following prompt. You are a specialist chemistry teacher in Scotland. Write a lesson plan to teach the following parts of the SQA National 5 Chemistry curriculum: Fuels release varying amounts of energy when burned. The amount of thermal energy released is determined experimentally and can be calculated using: Eh = cmΔT. Lessons are 50 minutes.
5 ways to use AI lesson plans
- Role Play – Make the AI what you want it to be. You are a chemistry teacher teaching advanced chemistry in Scotland…
- Please be as specific as possible. Lessons should be 50 minutes long and include introductory questions to review required prior knowledge.
- Don't accept the first plan. Modify your plan using prompts. For example: Can I rewrite it to make the practice a teacher-led demonstration rather than a classroom practice?
- Review and edit what has been created. For example, is the term correct in the context? Have there been any appropriate recommendations or risk assessments actually put forward?
- experiment! Take the time to try out AI tools and see how they work.
The plan developed from this prompt was a good starting point for a lesson on this area of the curriculum, and the goals for the suggested lesson were appropriate. It began with an explanation of the concept of thermal energy as applied to chemical reactions and included practical standards for measuring the thermal energy released during combustion. However, there were some context-specific issues. For example, in Scotland, SQA expects students to learn about energy in kJ and mass of matter being heated in kg, but lesson plans created by ChatGPT used joules and grams. In Scotland, SQA typically uses negative exponents for units (e.g. kJkg)-1℃-1), solidus notation (e.g. kJ/kg°C) was used in the generated lesson plans. ChatGPT produced a similar error when asked to create a lesson plan to teach Metallic Bonding for SQA National 5 Chemistry. It proposed teaching students about the metallic properties of ductility and malleability, which are not essential knowledge in National 5 Chemistry.
talking to a robot
AI tools can also be used to generate resources to support planned lessons. Again, care must be taken as AI tools are not immune to student-like errors. Below is an example of a discussion I had with a ChatGPT after I asked them to write a question to see if they understood the use of relationships. Eh = cmΔT.
Chat GPT: If the temperature of the substance increases by 15°C and the mass of the substance is 2 kg, what is the change in thermal energy (kJ) using a specific heat capacity of 4 kJ/kg°C?
a) 8kJ
b) 30kJ
c) 60kJ
d) 120kJ
Answer: c) 60 kJ
myself: Do you really have the right answer?
Chat GPT: I apologize for the error in my previous answer. The correct answer is: b) 120 kJ. Thank you for finding the mistake. thank you for understanding.
I have slowly introduced student teachers at Edinburgh Napier University to the use of AI tools and will continue to do so as they progress through their PGDE. I hear you ask, “Don't we want our student teachers to have lesson planning skills?” Yes, of course.
I work with student teachers to improve their lesson planning skills using (scary) lesson planning templates. Then use AI to improve these skills even further. For example, a student creates her two different lesson plans for a particular lesson and compares the plans. Or create a lesson plan and explain how it could be improved using evidence/research to support your improvement suggestions. It's naive to think that my student's teacher won't use her AI tools. So it was a no-brainer for me to take the opportunity to explain the benefits and pitfalls of using he AI tools to create lesson plans and resources.
So does using AI to support lesson planning make teachers less skilled? No, good teachers use AI tools critically and adapt their results to the curriculum and students in front of them. Masu.
Colin McGill is an Education Lecturer on the PGDE program at Edinburgh Napier University.
