Ai Ai Ai AI it's HERE!!

AI the Future of the Four Cs

Tricia R. Sang

Full Sail University

IDT520-0 Strategies for Learner Engagement

No funding was required in the creation of this blog. I would like to thank my cheerleaders- my four boys (all fur babies), Oreo- the Jack Chiweenie, Snoopy- the Beagle, Kovu- the Australian Shepherd, Chow and Rat Terrier mix, and our new addition and menace, the puppy Simba- the Great Pyrenes, German Shepherd and Siberian Husky mix (we affectionately call him Simbad da turd), he’s a giant furball of energy and a whirling Dervish that destroys anything it can chew in its path, and my dear daughter. Seriously though this blog is for all educators, instructional coaches, instructional designers and anyone interested in the current impact of AI on education or creativity with regards to student or learner motivation, engagement, volition and generating mastery of their craft.

Learning should be a continuous process. AI is here and it’s here to stay. How do we employ the best aspects of AI to fuel education immersed in technology that helps us utilize the four Cs to create instruction, content and curriculum that is engaging, motivates the learner, enables volition and inspires them to seek eventual mastery as they find the knowledge and skills, they learn meaningful to them and applicable to their lives? What policies will we now implement as AI technology grows steam on various LMS and applications that the instructors, instructional designers, instructional coaches and learners of all kinds are using to prevent information accessibility overload for all stakeholders and the AI tech itself?

AI- Artificial Intelligience

Four Cs- Connections, Conditions, Challenge, Control

LMS- Learning Management Software

SWDs- Students With Disabilities

AI the Future of the Four Cs

The advancement of human learner motivation

Last Semester we saw AI arrive with a bang to classrooms from K-12 and colleges and universities everywhere, without fanfare but nevertheless in your face. It is here and it is here to stay. I am a certified Exceptional Education Teacher (Interrelated) which means I am required to be a Jack of all core content areas but a master of differentiated instruction. I am also a certified Engineering and Technology teacher who for now is imprisoned by Exceptional Education due to the national crisis level teacher shortage and the ever supposedly diminishing enrollment that sees class sizes growing ever larger and CTAE courses like the one I passionately want to teach get dropped from the courses being offered to students because meaningless numbers and points dictate how schools are funded and how many teachers get hired and how professional development and instruction is delivered with what technologies are made available. Anyway, as I said AI is in the classrooms and with most school districts in the US since the pandemic now operating on one to one Chromebook, iPad or laptop per student and every teacher having a laptop and smart boards in every classroom for the most part, we must as instructional designers be able to positively hone the power of technology, including AI to increase learner motivation and engagement when building curriculum on the various LMS.

Back to last semester, while I am a co-teacher, which means I am in the co-taught classroom setting in a high school, one content area teacher who is supposed to be a master of the content and one exceptional education teacher who is supposed to be a master at differentiated instruction, we encountered students using AI at its first public rollout in January of this year in a 9th grade ELA class to write papers and poetry. We decided as a 9th grade team to allow its use but the students would have to edit their papers or poems to express themselves as they naturally would or face getting zeros for plagarism and a lack of academic integrity. I in particular used it with my students who were mostly weak readers and could not coherently express themselves in a written format. I found that after I showed them how to use AI as a way to help themselves formulate their written ideas, rather than to cheat they felt much more confident and motivated to learn and felt included in the learning process. One student thanked me for showing him how to use AI correctly as he struggled through the writing process, first with graphic organizers and pre-writing but just could not find a way to coherently string those ideas together.

Here is what ChatGPT had to say about using AI to motivate and engage students, especially SWD's " 1. Personalized learning paths 2. Accesible Content 3. Real-time feedback 4. Gamefication 5. Predictivive analytics 6.( NLP) Natural Language Processing 7. Mutimodal learning materials 8. Collaborative learning tools 9. Data privracy and security 10. Training and Support 11. Feedback loop 12. Inclusive design would all be a powerful tool to enhance their learning experience." (Open AI, 2023)

In the article Artificial Intelligence: A Double Edged Sword For Students and Teachers published in The Spartan Shield (a student edited and produced blog on WordPress from Pleasant Valley High School) "The AI is capable of writing code and essays and completing math problems, these unique capabilities raise concerning questions for teachers of high schools and colleges alike." (Wilsted, 2023)

Meaningful or Impactful Lessons that go beyond the classroom

When students are able to find meaning in their education, they become more invested in their own learning outcomes. AI can help us as instructional designers and instructors become more proficient and eventual masters at that. The AI can and already has collected enough data to provide us with in depth analysis of our students and stakeholders needs and values that dictate how we should design our lessons to help them ascertain meaning that impacts them and they can see the why of the subjects or content they are learning. LMS' like Khan Academy, Progress Learning, BrainPop, Educaplay, Kahoot, Quizziz, Canvas, Dreambox Reading Plus, Delta Math and numerous others all use AI to gather data about their users and content developers to enhance their platforms for their users and attempt to individualize and differentiate the instructional content to meet the needs of diverse learners. AI uses data to help us as instructional designers find a way to integrate the four Cs into the classroom for face-to-face instruction with the use of technology and the accessibility to LMS.

According to the article Four Cs for Better Student Engagement "students also feel connected to learning itself when they perceive it as meaningful." (Fisher, et al, 2023)

AI has given us a way to make these powerful connections and employ the four Cs in classrooms, in e-learning and through nano-learning through the data it has collected before being released in an open source large language model format in January of this year. We can utilize this data to drive how we differentiate instruction in an inclusive model to our diverse learners so they can all become confident learners and in doing so form the needed connections to themselves and their communities when the conditions in the classroom create opportunities for them to fulfill high expectations for themselves and through persistence learn that they have control over their learning outcomes.

Eventual Mastery through accessible LMS and Instructional Delivery

The way to attain mastery is through motivation and eventually employ volition to stay dedicated to continuous learning. "AI is being used by KhanMigo beta to personalize learning and encourage socratic thinking through collaborating with the AI which gives them feedback. It also works with teachers to allow them to actually create more exciting lesson plans. These are the positive use cases wherein AI can enhance HI." (Khan, 2023)

"Using technology one can approximate one-to-one tutoring, and using mastery learning with an online system a student could improve from just average to above average by tailoring lessons to the student personally." (Khan, 2023) Generative AI is being tested on several LMS platforms and apps that students use for various purposes. Apps like Photomath, Study.com, Google Translate, Duolingo, etc are incorporating AI. It's here and it's here to stay. Education use policies and safeguards are coming but I sincerely hope that we use common sense regulation.

"Motivation to learn is promoted and maintained when learners employ volitional (self-regulatory) strategies to protect their intentions" (Keller and Deinmann, 2018) This occurs naturally when learners engage with AI on learning platforms in a student inquiry learning format and the AI in answering their questions as a learning facilitator rather than giving automated "correct" answers. I have actually now started my own research into how AI can positively facilitate learning and make it accessible to all.

References

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Gonzalez, A. (2023, September). Four Cs for Better Student Engagement . Winter Park. Retrieved September 13, 2023,.

Khan, S. (2023a, September). Harnessing AI for Education . TED talks in Education. You Tube; July 2023.

Khan, S. (2023b, September). How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education . TED. YouTube; May 2023.

Wilsted, J. (2023, January 10). Artificial Intelligence: A Double Edged Sword for Students and Teachers. The Spartan Shield. September 13, 2023, https://spartanshield.org/36643/news/artificial-intelligence-a-double-edged-sword-for-students-and-teachers/

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (September 12 version) [Large language model]. https;//chat.openai.com/chat

Reiser, R., Dempsey, J., Keller, J., & Deinmann, M. (2018). Chapter 9: Motivation, Volition and Performance . In Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (pp. 78–86). essay, Pearson.