Generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT is “shaking up a lot of things,” including the way Quebec schools work. And since we will not put the genie back in the bottle, experts suggest that teachers find “the right, responsible use” while waiting for more formal directives.
“AI as such is not a threat, it is an opportunity for teachers to save time in preparing their lessons and in the knowledge they have of their class”, explains to Duty the president of the Quebec Association of Users of Technological Tools for Educational and Social Purposes (AQUOPS), Stéphane Lavoie.
At the end of March, AQUOPS will hold its 42e annual conference on the good uses of educational technologies. A sign of the times, 60 of the approximately 300 workshops held during the event will focus on AI. Another sign that doesn’t lie: tickets to attend the conference are selling out at a speed that hasn’t been seen in 20 years, essentially since the advent of the Internet for many schools.
Despite this technological enthusiasm, the authorities are slow to react, so much so that schools and teachers are invited by AQUOPS to “use their heads” and “take advantage of this opportunity” to reasonably tackle the problems that AI can help solve, such as teachers’ work overload.
“The Ministry of Education has only made the major warning not to promote the use of AI among students while waiting for clear guidelines from the Superior Council of Education,” continues Stéphane Lavoie. From there, there are still concrete applications that can be used. There is a speed of execution to be found. »
Mr. Lavoie gives the example of a teacher who can accelerate the creation of a lesson plan thanks to the assistance of AI, which can also generate questionnaires to submit to students during the year based on the content that should be presented to them. “The time savings in preparing lessons can be significant,” he says.
AQUOPS will present during its conference other use cases applied by education professionals at all levels. This ranges from the accelerated creation of multimedia presentations, thanks to web services like the visual editor Canva, to algorithms that help teachers more quickly detect students who are struggling to keep up, to tools that help their users to structure their thinking.
“Schools in the United States have adopted a type of interactive journal that asks questions to help structure cognitive reasoning. It’s not a very complex AI tool, but it helps students,” says Stéphane Lavoie.
Guidelines
By happy coincidence, the EDTEQ association, which represents 110 Quebec companies specializing in educational technologies, published this week, in collaboration with the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technology (OBVIA) and the Center transfer for educational success in Quebec, two guides intended for creators of educational technologies as well as their users.
EDTEQ wishes to “equip entrepreneurs to face the challenges of integrating technologies in the school context, such as inequalities of access, digital skills, security and protection of personal information and the fear of overconsumption”.
The launch of these guides “demonstrates the desire of the entire sector to develop good practices and to question its own integration and exemplarity,” explains the organization. This is not always the case in all sectors, nor even for creators of educational technologies outside Quebec. »
Last fall, EDTEQ called for a national debate on the use of digital technology in classes in order to have this social debate and ask the right questions now and regulate these technologies if necessary.
These guides are based on a review of scientific literature conducted last summer by OBVIA dealing with the impact of technologies such as AI on teaching. Their conclusion: the school environment must not prevent itself from adopting new technologies, but it must dictate the rules of the game.
EDTEQ bluntly quotes the Higher Council of Education: “The education system cannot simply consider digital technology in terms of levers for learning. We must ensure that all people have the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to evolve in the world as it is changing and make positive use of digital technology. »