What does the research tell us?

Let me share something that might surprise you, and hopefully reassure you, too. If you’re feeling uncertain about AI and education, you’re actually in excellent company. In fact, you are part of the majority right now. Recent research from the Digital Education Council shows that while 86% of students are already using AI tools in their studies, only 18% of faculty feel they understand how to teach with AI, and just 14% feel confident doing that. But here’s the interesting part. 72% of faculty are already experimenting with it anyway. Now, maybe that sounds familiar. You might be quietly trying out ChatGPT for lesson planning, or maybe you’ve asked Claude to help you think through how to explain a complex concept like I did. You’re not alone, and you’re definitely not behind.

The research also reveals something really important. There’s no single right way to approach AI in education. The studies identify that faculty perspectives do typically fall into four distinct profiles: Optimistic, Critical, Critically reflective, and Neutral, and all of these positions are valid. What matters isn’t really what category you fall into, but that you’re engaging thoughtfully with these tools, or at least thinking about them carefully and considerately. And what I find particularly interesting is how students are using AI. According to the research they’re primarily using it for searching information, improving their writing, summarizing documents, creating first drafts, and getting explanations of complex concepts. And they’re using it across a wide variety of tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Perplexity coming out as kind of the most popular tools.

The research also shows something encouraging. Faculty are experimenting with AI for both productive tasks and creative applications like boosting student engagement and teaching students to use AI effectively in class. And that last part’s important because, as I noted, students are really turning to AI for quite a lot of tasks. And so to me at least, it feels a little bit like a responsibility to teach them how to use it effectively, to think critically about it, to evaluate it, and to understand that even in its evolved state and its continuing to evolve state, at least for now, AI requires human evaluation and human contextualization to actually be an effective learning tool. What’s probably important about all of this research is that it shows that we’re figuring it all out together as we go, and that’s exactly how it should be. Innovation and education has always been a collaborative process, and AI is no different. So, let’s all take a deep breath together. We are not behind, we are not too late, and we are definitely not alone on this journey. And if you’re still skeptical, I wanna say, “That’s great.” We need a healthy dose of skepticism to keep us grounded and to ensure that we move forward slowly and scrupulously.