Educators Must Take a Leadership Role in AI Literacy

Educators have an opportunity to take a leadership approach toward promoting AI literacy and implementing AI in digital teaching and learning.

That has been the message of Every Learner Everywhere’s Director Karen Cangialosi in several presentations recently, including one at the Maryland Online Leadership Institute (MOLLI) Expert Insights Workshop.

The decisions made by faculty, instructional designers, and students today will significantly influence the trajectory of Artificial Intelligence development. Therefore, higher education must understand the technology and take a leadership role in shaping how it will be developed and integrated into our lives.

“Without a comprehensive understanding of AI, there is a risk of exacerbating existing inequities, reinforcing biases, spreading misinformation, and overlooking the potential consequences of unchecked technological advancement,” Cangialosi said.

A proactive approach to fostering critical AI literacy can enable responsible and equitable integration of emerging tools for teaching and learning. Ideally, AI literacy is promoted by a comprehensive policy across campuses and institutions.

By prioritizing AI literacy, universities can ensure graduates are well prepared to navigate the complexities of AI, contribute responsibly to technological advancements, and lead with ethical considerations. Literacy begins with understanding the rapidly changing technology.

Keeping up with changing technology

“AI is not magic,” explained Cangialosi. “It’s not going to save the day. It’s not going to end all humanity.”

But she also stresses that AI is not going away. Instead, it is rapidly changing and becoming capable of more every week. For example, what was only text or image generation a year ago is now becoming multi-modal and can make recommendations. For example:

• Unriddle.AI uses Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to summarize documents.
• Turbolearn.AI uses Augmented Speech Recognition (ASR) to create study notes out of video, text or images.
• AnswersAI produces answers by scanning images, videos and text.

Meanwhile, the text- and image-generation capabilities have expanded to music and video generation with tools such as Suno and HeyGen.

All of these are powerful tools with potential positives for teaching and learning. For example, they may make courses more accessible.

Cangialosi argued that guarding against cheating is the wrong focus. “Instead, we need to work with students to understand AI rather than trying to catch them cheating or putting in traps for them,” she said.

“We need to trust our students and work to earn their trust. This is an opportunity instead of a crisis, but it can be a crisis if we don’t take the opportunity.”

One problem with AI in teaching and learning is that AI is marketing to students as a way to offload academic work and save time. Educators need to help direct the future of AI by showing students ethical ways to use the developing tools.

Understanding AI benefits and problems

Cangialosi said the best way to move students toward AI literacy is for faculty and staff to receive adequate AI-related professional development:

1. AI is trained on copyrighted data that can include personal information, medical records, and other sensitive information.
2. How AI produces results is kept mysterious. Companies create proprietary algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data, and they don’t want to reveal too much about that proprietary process. However, using tools without understanding how the algorithms work can be problematic.
3. Outputs depend on inputs. The “garbage in, garbage out” rule applies to AI the same as with all digital technologies. For example, the racial biases rife in the internet inevitably show up as biased output.

Educators can exert influence on a still-fluid field, but influence is only possible when there is a strategic plan. “One of the things we can do is engage with the AI efforts,” said Cangialosi.

“The engagement can take various forms, including creating open-source projects, negotiating better service contracts with providers, lobbying for regulations, and issuing public scholarship”

Developing a plan for AI literacy in higher ed

Cangialosi recommends institutions examine three components of AI literacy:

1. Understanding. Know the tools and how data sets work. We must also understand and acknowledge the problems with AI fabrication or hallucination, in which AI models make up information if there is insufficient available data.
2. Applications. Know how AI is used for business and everyday life. Understanding how to input good prompts to get the best results is critical.
3. Ethical Considerations. Along with privacy, data rights, and algorithmic bias concerns, AI has a big environmental/energy use footprint. It also raises concerns about the exploitation of human labor since AI systems rely on massive data sets labeled by humans working for low wages.

One particular resource Cangiolosi recommends is Framework for Accessible and Equitable Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education from the Inclusive Design Research Centre

Get on the front foot

Educators can only guide students if they move forward by taking the time to understand various AI tools and how they work, and talking to students about what is and isn’t acceptable use in their classes. It would be a significant misstep to think we can “just say no” or ban AI. AI is not a passing trend. It is here to stay, and it has possible benefits.

“It’s our responsibility to teach students how to use it responsibly and to communicate the potential it has for improving learning,” Cangialosi said. Developing an institutional plan, including faculty development efforts, is only the first step. Creating a comprehensive framework for generative AI across the institution is essential for the future.

Fortunately, there are resources available to help guide this new framework.

Key resources for higher education leaders

Cangialosi points to several institutions  helping create an AI framework:

• WCET, founded by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), is working to develop institutional-level AI policies and practices.
• The Mississippi AI Institute openly licensed AI crucial literacy learning materials that could help you form a faculty community of practice on your campus.
• Creativity Takes Courage is a crowdsourced collection of creative ideas on using AI in education.
• The AI Pedagogy Project from Harvard’s metaLAB helps teachers use AI critically, ethically, and responsibly in the classroom.

Don’t wait to formalize a strategy. Instead, bring together all campus constituents and encourage open dialogue.