Striking a balance for AI in Education: keeping the human at the centre
First off, a clear admission: I’m a tech geek. I’ve always been drawn to technology and how to leverage it in meaningful ways. I like to break things and tinker. As a former teacher of 23 years, I know how crucial it is to find (and try to use) foolproof technology. If you’ve ever worked in an all-boys school, you’ll know exactly why!
Over the years, I’ve tried and tested a wide range of tools for learning and teaching. What I’ve found is that the brightest and loudest solution often fades the fastest. I’m a believer in evolution, not revolution, in education.
Trial, Error, and Tools That Stuck
My A-Level students loved their Kahoot Fridays, fun is essential when teaching complex grammar. But over time, I found tools that helped build long-term memory retention were more effective. One standout was Memrise. A focused period using it captivated students, and follow-up assessments showed genuine LTM (long-term memory) gains.
Why McGraw Hill and ALEKS Resonated With Me
Over the years, I’ve explored countless tools and platforms in my search for meaningful educational technology, solutions that genuinely support both learners and educators. Most fade over time, but occasionally, something stands out for its long-term impact.
One such platform was ALEKS.
It wasn’t just the technology that impressed me, it was what it represented. ALEKS is a tool that understands the complexities of how people learn, especially in subjects that many students struggle with, like mathematics. It’s adaptive, data-driven, and focused on mastery, not just completion.
ALEKS was one of the tools that drew me to McGraw Hill. But beyond the product itself, I was drawn to the company’s ethos. Much like Apple, McGraw Hill may not always be first to market but it has a track record of refining great ideas and applying them with integrity. There’s a quiet confidence in its approach: innovation with purpose, and always with an eye on impact over novelty.
And what better place to make a meaningful impact than in education?
For me personally, ALEKS felt like the natural next step in the evolution of intelligent learning tools. It brought together what I appreciated from earlier edtech platforms but with far more depth and intelligence behind it. Frankly, I wish ALEKS had been around when I was wrestling with GCSE Maths 30 years ago this year. It might have made that struggle a little easier.
The ChatGPT Inflection Point
Fast forward to late December 2022, news of ChatGPT was spreading rapidly through our regional “tech in education” WhatsApp groups. I waited in line for access and, once in, I was impressed by the early results. But I was quickly reminded of the old “rubbish in, rubbish out” rule. Prompting became a skill I needed to refine.
As a leader in immersive education, I also saw the tool’s limits right away. It struggled terribly with Gaeilge (Irish language) but why was I surprised? We’d been grappling with Google Translate for years. Still, I saw potential, especially for others.
Within 3–4 weeks, I was prompting ChatGPT to write A-Level standard essays that hit all the rubric points in mark schemes.
Staffroom Reactions and Early Warnings
As I shared these findings with staff, two things happened. First, they saw the value in AI for content creation. But then the alarm bells rang.
In one staff training session, I presented eight ‘student’ pieces of writing and asked staff to identify which were AI-generated. The result? Complete failure. I’d prompted the AI to mimic local Irish colloquialisms and include common student errors.
The deception was convincing and that was nearly two years ago.
Current Crisis: The Three Camps
Now, AI usage is widespread and often misused. Students are passing off AI-generated work as their own, and we’ve hit a crossroads. In schools, there are three clear camps emerging:
1. Embrace it
2. Fight it
3. Pretend it doesn’t exist and stick your head in the sand!
A Broader Perspective: Higher Education Realities
As I celebrate one year working as McGraw Hill’s Learning Specialist for Business Schools across the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Northern and Central Europe, I’ve been given an in-depth insight into the challenges facing Higher Education. These include the impact of AI, disengaged students, lack of industry-aligned skills, heavy staff workloads, and a worrying decline in critical thinking.
While there are some cultural or societal nuances across these regions, the core challenges remain similar. But I’ve also seen that, by gently leaning into technology, ethically and appropriately, to enhance teaching and learning, real progress is possible.
McGraw Hill has been a trusted voice in education for more than 130 years, and it’s clear that thoughtful, balanced integration of edtech can still empower both educators and learners.
Edtech Hype vs Reality
There’s a lot of noise right now in the edtech sector, a wave of startups promising personalised learning, revolutionary tools, increased engagement, and all-in-one solutions that promise educational utopia. But glitz and glam can’t fix years of underinvestment or the neglect of the most valuable voices in the room: educators.
Pre-packaged, fully planned lessons might save time, but they strip away the personal connection. Planning may be frustrating especially in K–12 environments where it often means box-ticking for buzzwords but it’s essential. Technology should support educators by relieving them of the laborious, repetitive tasks.
Feedback: Where AI Belongs and Where It Doesn’t
Let’s take feedback. For Assessment for Learning, we should absolutely embrace algorithms that provide immediate, formative feedback, telling students where they are and how they can improve.
But for longer, more in-depth assessments? AI-generated feedback can be counterproductive. It risks devaluing the role of the educator. Students themselves have echoed this sentiment.
We’re now seeing a scenario where a student uses AI to write their work, and the educator uses AI to mark it. If that becomes the norm, education risks losing its soul.
Ideally, educators would have time to provide 1:1 verbal feedback, the kind that feels personal and is more likely to be listened to and acted upon. Research backs this up: verbal feedback is more effective, more valued, and contributes to a greater sense of belonging.
Blooms Taxonomy Revisited
I’ve always been a huge advocate of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Traditionally, even though it’s not strictly a hierarchy, we treat creation as the final goal, achieved only after knowledge is obtained, understood, and analysed.
But LLMs (Large Language Models) have flipped that idea. Now, students can create without the necessary foundations. This should be a wake-up call. AI should shine a light on the importance of those lower tiers again, knowledge, understanding, analysis, because without them, creation is hollow.
Reimagining Assessment
Assessment and delivery need a major rethink. John Hattie’s research shows that traditional, didactic lectures can have a negative impact on learning. While direct instruction still has its place, we need to move beyond this method of knowledge transfer.
We missed one major opportunity for change during COVID. Now, AI gives us another.
With the right use of AI algorithms, and a little incentivisation, we can track learning before lectures even begin. We need more authentic assessments. In the UK, Jisc has been doing commendable work in this area. Similarly, Australia’s Deakin University offers a thoughtful, twin-track approach to AI alongside their innovative “Swiss cheese model” of assessment.
Balancing AI Fluency with Core Skills
The World Economic Forum and other industry voices are clear: AI fluency is a key skill. Students should absolutely have opportunities to engage with AI, when appropriate, within their courses.
But AI shouldn’t be the centrepiece.
At the moment, GenAI is hogging the limelight. That’s diverting attention from the true building blocks of learning: skill acquisition, curiosity, and the desire to learn.
If we rely too heavily on GenAI’s predictive capabilities, we risk losing what makes us human, ingenuity and creativity.
Learning is hard. Deep learning is harder. But it’s also deeply rewarding. There’s nothing quite like the sense of achievement from learning a new language fluently. Relying on an LLM is like using a translation app to order dinner abroad, it solves a short-term need, but not a long-term goal.
Learning is Human
Learning is social. It thrives on interaction, trial and error, and failing forward. It’s not always enjoyable in the moment, but it’s vital, for individuals and for society.
In a world dominated by social media and flooded with misinformation and disinformation, the most critical skill we must nurture is critical thinking.
As Martin Luther King Jr. wisely said:
“Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.”