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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
You have to craft your assignments and assume that the students are going to use AI, but craft it so the students have to at least engage and work with AI so they're still understand the process. This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. My name is Ryan Lyming, and today Doctor. Rob McDowell and I interview Doctor. David Leach, Associate Professor of Special Education in the School of Education and Social Work at Cedarville University. Doctor Leach has a PhD from Kent State University, as well as a JD from Cleveland State University.
Ryan:Thanks for joining us.
Rob:It's a pleasure. Thank you,
Dave Leitch:doctor Leach. Well, thanks for having me.
Rob:So what brings us to this wonderful conversation is your usage of AI, of which one of your students
Dave Leitch:Mhmm.
Rob:Least I know of one who we had on the podcast, told us that you were doing lots of different things in her course in education with AI. So, obviously, I think you've been using it. Is that fair to say?
Dave Leitch:That's fair to say. Now the lots may be a matter of interpretation, but I will tell you what I do, which compared to maybe my colleagues is a lot for those that haven't really delved into it. Mhmm. Yeah. Mhmm.
Rob:Alright. So walk us through some of the things that you've been doing.
Dave Leitch:You know, I have I like sci fi movies. You know? So
Ryan:Who doesn't?
Dave Leitch:Who well, I
Ryan:don't know. Are some.
Dave Leitch:Not like sci fi. I He
Ryan:likes he likes a good sci fi. You like okay.
Dave Leitch:So I I have watched so then we all can say we've all watched quite a few movies where AI, you know, self actualized. Mhmm. I, Robot took over. You know who know? And so the fear of having AI take over is always something that has plagued humanity or some humanity, including my wife.
Dave Leitch:So but, you know, I went to a conference on AI in education and and I said, man, you know, there's some things I got some practical stuff there and I saw immediately things I could use. So I started real basic. And, again, all these accounts are free. So I found there's two that are really, that have some really good stuff for educators. Again, these are these are platforms that are just for teachers, whether K through 12 or higher ed, and and they allow you to select what you're you're creating it for as well.
Dave Leitch:So I started with a syllabus AI chatbot. So I simply told AI that they were the review they weren't the reviewer. They they were gonna tell the students if asked a question about the syllabus, what what like a due date. Students could just type in a due date or verbally say, what's the due date for this assignment? And AI will spit it back.
Dave Leitch:So you just you know, there's maybe three sentences to tell AI what I wanted it to do. And then I uploaded the syllabus and that's all it took. So but then I thought, well, I'd be a little bit creative. And so each course then, I asked AI and told it to be somebody and to respond in that way. So for instance, in one of the courses, it had to respond as a member of the British royal family.
Ryan:Okay.
Dave Leitch:And so every response would first give the answer to the syllabus question and then it would it would always make a very detailed reference to a member of the British royal family and why why there was a connection there. So then then I the first day of class, then when I took the break, I I explained, here's the syllable. We have this chatbot and decide, all they have to do, you set it up. So I have a just a link they copy and paste the link into another tab, browser tab, and then they can type in or say whatever question they have. Said, so, you know, I got a candy bar in the line here.
Dave Leitch:Somebody tells me who the chatbot is. And so at break then, they're all going on there and asking a question and trying to
Rob:Trying to find out. Trying to
Dave Leitch:find who who the person was.
Ryan:That's certainly livens up syllabus day.
Dave Leitch:It does liven up syllabus day. It beats a syllabus quiz.
Ryan:That's right.
Dave Leitch:So I did that initial that was the first thing I did. Then I did relatively easy to create an AI assignment review chatbot. So, again, in that particular case, you just tell AI that you want them to review draft assignments. And I have pretty detailed rubrics and instructions to go along with it. So I wasn't I wasn't recreating or creating the instructions in the rubric, I already had them.
Dave Leitch:So I just uploaded a file and AI would use that. And then students then would upload their draft and AI would tell them what was incorrect, what they could work on. And so that allowed them to do that. So put this in context, I happen to in in all my classes, students can send me their assignment forty eight hours in advance. I will review it for them before they submit it.
Dave Leitch:Mhmm. Mhmm. So they all have that option. And I will tell them if they need to correct something. So in my course, if you do that and you correct what I tell you, you will get a %.
Dave Leitch:But because my philosophy is I'm not trying to trick you. I want you to learn my material. So I'm I'm giving that to you. So but if you don't if you procrastinate, now you have an opportunity five minutes before you have to submit it. You can upload it and AI will review it in about thirty seconds and tell you what you know, whether you have time to correct it or not, you know.
Dave Leitch:And, so what I found on the ones I was using, and the one I would primarily use is schoolAI.com. So again, that's free. But when a student will upload, there's an ask AI to review. It keeps a transcript of the interaction with that student. And so I can look at every student that has uploaded an AI review, and I can see what their interaction was.
Dave Leitch:Was it one simple question? Did they go back and forth? So, not only you know, when when I see a bad grade, I I know that I didn't review it, and I can then go to AI and see if he he or she allowed AI to review it. So if they didn't allow anybody to review it, then, you know, they kinda deserve the grade that they got. I mean, my sympathy ends at about that point.
Dave Leitch:So what I have found on the reviews is AI is probably about 80 to 90% correct in catching things. So it doesn't catch everything. And so what I tell my students, well, they probably know this is I'm the only perfect person. And so when review it, you will get a % because if I miss something, I give you the benefit of it out. Sure.
Dave Leitch:Whereas AI, it may not quite catch something and but you can give it to me before that. I'll read it. So anyway, that's what I found. AI is about 80 to 90% correct on the reviews. And then also, have found that AI never tells you the assignment is perfect.
Dave Leitch:Mm-mm. It will always continue the engagement. Mhmm. So a student has to go either one's gonna go, okay. I'm just tired of this.
Ryan:It's good enough. Right?
Dave Leitch:Yeah. Good. They they're gonna have to say I'm good enough, right, to the at the point they go, okay. You know? But I I those are the two things that I found on that.
Dave Leitch:And I've also found that, you know, not all students will have a regardless of how easy it is. Again, all they're doing is cut and pasting a link and pull it up and then they upload their draft. It it it couldn't take about a minute and a half to do all that, and the review happens nearly simultaneously.
Rob:How many of your students, would you say actually utilize that option?
Dave Leitch:On on the Did you require it or you just For one assignment, I did. And that was an assignment. So we have I'm I teach in education. And so we have a lesson plan template. So when they teach a class in a school, everybody uses the same template.
Dave Leitch:Right? So one of the things they have to do very early on in that lesson plan is they have to write an objective. Okay. In the school of education, we have actually voted on a certain format of the objective. It's a mnemonic strategy, ABCD, okay?
Dave Leitch:So it's kind of specific. And so I spent a great deal of time in one class on this ABCD model and how to do it. So in that, and I found what I found in prior years up to this year is that students would miss a lot on that, particularly if they didn't let me review it, they're okay. But if they didn't let me review it, they're almost always gonna miss points. So in that case, I forced them to upload it, allow AI to review, and then had to post a screenshot of the part of the interaction.
Dave Leitch:I could look at the whole thing, but they at least had to post the screenshot. And that cut down then on all of these awful lot of those misses on that particular assignment, which was very common if they hadn't let me review it.
Rob:Which made it easier for you to grade in the back end.
Dave Leitch:Bingo. Yeah. There's always that ulterior motive. Yeah. You wanna make life easier for yourself, you see.
Rob:Well, because the bad papers or the bad projects are the ones that are the hardest to grade, and
Dave Leitch:they take
Rob:the most time.
Dave Leitch:So when you have the Excedrin next to you. You know what I'm saying? Just popping that stuff because
Rob:Then I feel sorry for the person that comes after that paper. Yeah.
Dave Leitch:Right. So I I will say as an aside, the reviewing things ahead of time, we use Canvas here and it it allows you to put comments in. So I review the paper. I don't pregrade it. I won't give them a grade.
Dave Leitch:I will tell them what they need to correct. So then the email I send back to them of what to correct, I copy and paste that into Canvas for them. And instead of hitting submit, you can just click the arrow to the next student and it saves the comment, but they don't see the comment. Therefore, I go back when they do submit it. And if there was a comment that I said that said, hey.
Dave Leitch:You needed to correct this or was missing this. I don't review the whole document again. I just go back to what I had referred to and see if they'd actually done what I did.
Ryan:Right. You
Dave Leitch:know what to do. And so I'm not regrading it. And if the thing was perfect and ready to go and would've got full points, I just put the total points in there as well. Again, they don't see it. And as long as they upload the assignment, I don't spend time reviewing again.
Dave Leitch:So I would say probably 25 to 30% students allow me to pregrade. And so I've got about, you know, I've got about that much already pretty much graded when the assignment is due. So that's pretty nice. And then, you know, again, AI is that is kind of that second layer of review for those that procrastinate or those there are a few that will do both because that's the kind of students they are.
Ryan:Specifically, because of that 48 window. You know, doctor Leach will review it forty eight hours before the deadline, but the AI allows for Right. In between that time. Forty
Dave Leitch:five seconds beforehand if you wanna if you wanted to
Ryan:go the route.
Dave Leitch:Okay. So that that but, again, that one assignment I did require, and I will continue to do that because it worked it was very effective.
Rob:How many students do you have in your in that one course that you were talking about?
Dave Leitch:Depth took a course with the a b c d. I would say a range between eighteen and twenty five.
Ryan:Okay. Okay.
Dave Leitch:Two sections a semester. Every every education major has to take that particular course.
Rob:What would you estimate in terms of your time savings?
Dave Leitch:I wouldn't say it was significant amount of time savings on the AI side, but it that one particular segment, which I forced AI Mhmm. Just saves students from missing points and to write a good objective. If they don't learn to write the good objective, it haunts them the rest of their career because that course is a sophomore level course before they have been put into a school to teach. And then when they go into a school to teach, they have this lesson plan that we're working through and they have to write an objective. And then I supervise enough students to know that a lot of times the objective didn't follow what I taught them to do.
Dave Leitch:And and if you're unfortunate enough to have me the supervisor, I will in fact note that you
Rob:Didn't do
Dave Leitch:it. Do the ABCD. Mhmm. So I really do want you to know the ABCD because it's something you are going to have to do many, many times before you graduate your teaching license. And even when you're outside, they may not follow the exact a b c d objective model that we do, but it's very similar.
Dave Leitch:So you wanna know what a measurable observable verb is. For instance, you can't have an objective. If I can't see Rob if I can't get if I can't see you do something, I can't count it. Right? Right.
Dave Leitch:And then I can't see if you've if you've met my objective. So I've gotta use a verb that I could count. Right. I've gotta be able to see. And a lot of students will use a word like understand.
Dave Leitch:Like, three people grading something and you tell them, okay. Does a student understand? I don't know what a student understands. I don't know. They're doodling while they're sitting there.
Dave Leitch:Don't know. And another person goes, well, I think when they doodled, they actually did show a picture of what I was trying to grade. So you know? So As long as
Rob:it meets the rubric.
Dave Leitch:That's right. That's right. Right. So, you know, that's why, you know, five AI is catching Mhmm. Just something simple like that that will save them and hopefully just kind of rivet it and pound it into their their brain when they, you know, semester later, they're actually writing it for their lesson plan, which is in a lot of cases, that's what's happening in terms of the timing.
Ryan:Yeah. That's great.
Rob:What's interesting to me here, though, doctor Leach, is you're you seem to be honing in on this idea that of your responsibility, even for those students who don't have the motivation, but they're in your program, and you're gonna see them later. So if anything, it seems self serving to some degree, and I say that in the best way possible.
Dave Leitch:Mhmm.
Rob:That they actually know how to do the a b c d, you know, objectives.
Dave Leitch:Yes.
Rob:Yes. And we were having a conversation in the office. Jared isn't with us today, but Jared and I were having a conversation, and it was going back and forth. And one of the things that we were discussing is, is it the teacher's responsibility to make sure that students know those things, know those foundational pieces that you know are gonna show up later and they're going to serve as the foundation for the rest of what you're doing. And you're warm to the idea that it's your job as the teacher to make sure that you've given them every opportunity to do well.
Dave Leitch:I would say yes, but that wasn't your first statement. It was No. Do we have a requirement to get them to learn this? I mean,
Rob:Well, that's the next statement.
Dave Leitch:Yeah. I hope not because some students don't wanna learn. I mean, the only reason you should you're not gonna learn is because you really don't want to. That's my my personal philosophy. We always say, you know, I you wanna say, I can make any student learn.
Dave Leitch:But you do have to lay it out. If you're just up there lecturing and boring everybody to tears, many aren't gonna learn that. And if all you're doing is you know, we have this Bloom's taxonomy thing where the bottom level is knowledge where you're just having them Mhmm. Pair it back what you taught them. If if you just stay there, they memorize you know, they sleep on it, it leaks out that night.
Dave Leitch:They've forgotten the next day.
Rob:They passed a quiz or a test.
Dave Leitch:Right. So you gotta move up. You gotta start applying this stuff. You gotta, you know, you gotta start taking the basic knowledge and and getting them to do that. You know, we do that in education because we ultimately want you to teach.
Dave Leitch:So we do do that, but still you will be surprised. I guarantee you there are students that we put out in the field and then they go, I don't remember ever going over objectives before. I
Ryan:it's a bit foundational.
Dave Leitch:I don't know what class was that in that assessment class?
Ryan:Was that with doctor Leach?
Dave Leitch:It was that, you know, it was at course. But so I don't live under the fallacy that they remember everything I say. And, you know, there are things like, well, you ride a bike and there's something in the brain, you know, that does do that. But most things, if you don't use it, you lose it.
Ryan:That's right. Yeah. I'm curious too, you know, you kind of alluded to the fact that some students are, whether it's for the grade or for improvement or whatever, motivated to get things into you to have you review them. But then there's others that maybe do both, you know, they have you review, they have AI review. But there's still students who, even with that ease of opportunity, they're still not willing to, for whatever reason, take advantage of the free points, if you will.
Ryan:You know?
Dave Leitch:Well, it's what I know I call the Robb philosophy of education. I'm interested.
Ryan:You're very motivated to hear about the Robb don't really
Dave Leitch:if I don't really care about learning, I'm not gonna pay attention. Damn. I'm not gonna do it. So there are there are, unfortunately, students that do that. Okay.
Dave Leitch:But I do the best I can. I thought it was gonna be a mnemonic or Yeah. That's right.
Rob:Not just
Ryan:Or Rob Peter to pay Paul or something.
Rob:Yeah. Not just a reflection of what I said earlier.
Dave Leitch:The Rob rule right there. How about that?
Ryan:Rob rule.
Rob:I like it.
Dave Leitch:You don't have tend follow that rule in my own educational experience, but, you know
Rob:I it's been my experience that most students do.
Dave Leitch:Yes. Yeah. I have no I have no problem. So Yeah. It it is a challenge you want them to to get into what you're trying to teach.
Dave Leitch:No. I will say just as an aside in education and AI, things are progressing so fast. It's crazy. I mean, by the month. So you get new platforms all the time.
Dave Leitch:And but in schools now, they're expecting teachers when they graduate to have used AI now because, you know, I just got done supervising in one class. It was a high school class and it's a course, I think it was Ohio history or religion or so. It was something that there wasn't a curriculum, really good curriculum for. They just use AI and created their curriculum over the last two years. Had them do, you know, had AI do most of their PowerPoints and and all that stuff.
Dave Leitch:In higher ed then, schools are expecting our students to know how to work with AI, at least the basics at this point. And yet you say, well, I don't want them using AI to do their work in my class. And so you have this kind of thing going back forth. AI is very good with writing a paper for you and not getting caught. So there was a there was a big research study, one of the biggest, I guess, that in the conference I went to, almost every presenter was referring to it.
Dave Leitch:On writing a say you wanted to write a you were writing a 10 page paper on tanks in World War two. And they they said about it was about 35% that could catch somebody that just use AI to write the paper. But then if somebody was game in the system with AI, in other words, you can tell a created it like a tenth grade level, make sure there's a spelling error on every page.
Rob:Mhmm.
Dave Leitch:And if you did that, it went down to about 25% you could catch. So it's not like plagiarism. It's a lot harder to catch. So what you need to do, in my opinion, is you have to craft your assignments and assume that the students are gonna use AI, but craft it by making the students bring in personal stuff or make the instructions kind of technical, you know, make it a b c d. Don't just say write an objective.
Dave Leitch:And just so the students have to at least engage and work with AI so they're still understanding the process. I have this isn't held by everybody, you know, even my my colleagues, but I have no problem with a student actually having AI do one of their lesson plans. First of all, they have to use our template, so that makes it a little bit harder. But otherwise, we they have to come up with, activities. They're gonna go to a a book somewhere with that activity to get an idea possibly.
Dave Leitch:Now you just ask AI and it searches the cloud for everybody's activity that was ever made and they will find one for you. So, you know, I I think that and and and our students still has to teach the lesson. See, that's the ultimate catch. You could have AI write it for you and give you the ideas. But if you have to teach it, you can't have AI teach it to still better understand
Rob:What you're talking about.
Dave Leitch:That's right. Talking about how to do that. So that that's to me, that's the that's the ultimate catch in in the education where I think you can do that with most assignments. So on one assignment, I I did like, how to write a rubric. K.
Dave Leitch:So I give you school AI. There's one who's magic. Another one, again, magic school, and they have an item that will create a rubric for you.
Rob:I is also free by
Ryan:the For teachers. Mhmm.
Dave Leitch:And we like free again. So there's there's those out there, but they they actually has an item that would say make a rubric or rubric writer. Mhmm. I say, here here you know, use it. Feel free.
Dave Leitch:And AI does real well, but you still have to it still has to link with they have to create the lesson topic for the semester. It's their topic in their major. So you still have to double check what AI has done. But Mhmm. Why why not have AI write your rubric for you?
Dave Leitch:At least the beginning parts of it, and then you just look it over. Tweak it. Right? You just tweak it. But, again, you know, there are those that have a little bit different opinion, but I think they're fighting a losing battle on it, particularly if you have all your teachers out there that are doing this now.
Dave Leitch:And then you haven't allowed them to do it, and all of a sudden they graduate and they go their first teaching job, and they're kinda behind the eight ball on on using it.
Ryan:Yeah. The superintendent's like, you're you're the new guy. And you're be
Dave Leitch:a question in the inner truth. That's gonna be a question in the ear. How much have you used AI? It's probably a very common question now. I've worked with a colleague on kinda doing she is currently having groups work on a classroom management scenario, and they would come up with how to deal with it as a group.
Dave Leitch:And what she wanted to do then was to have them compare it to what AI would come up with. And so I showed her we we found really easy way within about five minutes, a platform and a location where the AI would actually create the scenarios, the classroom, they're already there, or she could just insert her own. And we had that thing up and running about two minutes of what she could do. And so the groups are next, I assume in the fall, are going to put together their response to the scenario and insert it into the AI, and AI will comment on it and give, you know, their response. So we played with that.
Dave Leitch:So that was, you know, that was relatively easy kind of thing to do. My colleague was a little nervous about it and thinking it would take forever, and I said, alright. Even if it takes you twice as long, it's only four minutes of you putting that together because I did that in two. It's like, I'm not an IT whiz here, but it's it really isn't that hard. And she
Ryan:was pleased with the results, essentially, the the classroom management scenario, but also kind of its approach of how it would handle the situation?
Dave Leitch:Yeah. With approach of how to handle it. I mean, she had her own scenario she was going to do for her particular course, but you could use the ones I mean, they're pretty general kind of thing, you know, kids talking all the time or something in class, what would you do? That kind of idea. Mhmm.
Dave Leitch:And that one was actually put together by some teacher out there, and it posted it. And so on some of these platform, which are all free, the ones I will mention at least because we love free. Mhmm. And so someone had created it and put it there and you could just you could use it as it was or in this case, you know, we walked through it and she was gonna put her own scenarios that she had already developed and put them in in place of that, but process would have been the same. So, yeah.
Dave Leitch:So I did not do that, but we walked through to do it for a colleague and I think she's going to do it and I think it's gonna look pretty good. Well, this
Rob:has been really helpful. Thank you for your time.
Dave Leitch:Oh, you're welcome.
Rob:It seems like you're saying to your colleagues, you embraced to some degree, we've got to use this. There are ways for us to use it effectively for students' benefit. Yes. We do have issues with them using it to write, but we're gonna have to figure out a way around that somehow Mhmm. Either with better objectives or better assignments.
Rob:And we're gonna have to face it. Our students are gonna have to face it, and we need to prepare them.
Dave Leitch:Yes. I would I would agree with all that.
Ryan:Thanks for joining this episode of Transform Your Teaching. Remember to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Remember also to connect with us on LinkedIn. And if you have any questions, feel free to connect with us at CTL podcast at Cedarville.edu, and don't forget to check out our blog, Cedarville Dot Edu forward /focusblog. Thanks for listening.