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- James D. Wolfinger, Ph.D., Dean, The School of Education, Discusses How Catholic Schools Are Coping With AI Use in the Classroom
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/new-york-post/20260121/282484305167566
By Erika Kurtz
IS the use of ChatGPT in schools cheating? The answer depends on who you ask. The generative artificial intelligence chatbot was developed by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based research organization composed of both a nonprofit and for-profit corporation, and released in November 2022. Its implications for K-12 and higher education are significant, according to administrators in the field.
“If you talk to 15-year-olds, they will say that use of AI technology doesn’t constitute cheating, but teachers will say yes. There’s a generational divide about the way you use AI in learning,” said James Wolfinger, dean of the School of Education at St. John’s University, a private Catholic college in Queens. “Each year, AI is twice as smart as it was the year before. We’re focused on what this looks like for teachers in practice and for students learning in schools, how to help parents understand what it is, and especially for kids going to a Catholic school — how does it get integrated,” said Wolfinger.
Cause for concern is warranted and widespread, according to data released in April 2024 from Turnitin, an education-software developer focused on plagiarism detection and originality checking.
Since the launch of its AI writing detection feature in April 2023, over 200 million papers have been reviewed. Of those, over 22 million had at least 20% AI writing present (as of March 2024). And frighteningly, over 6 million had at least 80% AI writing. “Professors and teachers find if you send an assignment home, a kid plugs a prompt into AI and it brings back an essay. Teachers are having to rethink the way they teach and assess work,” said Wolfinger.
The fear of AI’s affects is stirring anxiety among teachers, said Noreen Andrews, assistant principal at Union Catholic High School in Scotch Plains, NJ. With the arrival of ChatGPT, “we were thrown, just like every other educational institution, wondering was it going to be good or bad,” said Andrews. “We immediately threw ourselves in to learning and professional development. We did things like online classes with experts and sending teachers to conferences, so our faculty would understand what was happening in the world of education, how to cope and how to get kids ready for college in this new world.”
As for plagiarism, “we can’t play ‘gotcha’ — it’s not going to take us forward. We’re not going to be able to conduct business educationally as we’ve done in the past,” said Andrews.
“Project learning, oral questioning and conversation, that’s what students need for the future. No one is going to test them in the old-fashioned way. We’re moving students to a world of interaction.”
To this end, a team of teachers at Union Catholic became certified in the eight-week program Responsible Artificial Intelligence in Learning, or RAIL, through the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. With the credential, the school is now part of an international effort to prepare students to use AI responsibly, ethically and for the betterment of society, according to the school’s news release on the subject.
“It says a lot to our families. We’re progressive on this — working toward making sure your students are well prepared for literacy and fluency in AI,” said Andrews.
In addition, “we created a summer project in 2024, aligned with Magic School,” a company that looks to provide AI solutions for teachers, said Andrews. The company sells a safe, district-aligned AI platform for schools that “provides support, sparks creativity and improves student learning outcomes,” according to its website. “We wanted our teachers to be fluent in using the tool,” said Andrews. “They were tasked with creating dynamic assignments to do with students, centered on their own curriculum. Not only did teachers create lesson plans using AI, but students had to complete those projects using AI as well. It was very successful.” Looking ahead, “now that our teachers know what they’re doing, we have to get this into kids’ hands,” said Andrews. At Chaminade High School in Mineola, LI, “rather than shut down ChatGPT when it exploded, we took a positive approach to show kids how to use it correctly and embrace it,” said Gregory Kay, the school’s chief academic officer.
Typically, high schoolers aren’t great at research, he said. “We had kids write essays, knowing they were using AI, and had them find errors . . . to show them that this is not a finished product at all.”
Chaminade also embraced SchoolAI, a classroom experience platform, and Brisk Teaching, which uses AI-driven tools that streamline lesson planning, assessment and personalized learning. Kay finds their key benefit is one-to-one tutoring.
If leveraged correctly, AI’s capabilities are transformative, he added: “I’m starting to investigate new products, like NotebookLM, which uploads PDFs, websites, YouTube videos and more. It only pulls what you feed it. For a kid who is dyslexic, it can take notes from class and make a podcast. If you don’t read as fast as others, it’s a game-changer.”
As for AI’s influence on Catholic school students, “their education has to do with the dignity of the individual,” said Wolfinger. “With AI taking over so much of what you do for learning and eventually for work, where does it leave us humans? How do you contribute to community and society, living a fulfilling life? In the end, how will AI serve as a tool to be better humans and not something that supplants humanity?”
Andrews added, “Our school is governed by the rules of the church. Luckily, the pope has spoken out a number of times. He and the church recognize that AI is creeping in to our lives, but we’re still in a human world. We’re constantly leaning back on our catholicity for human interaction and the teachings of the church that govern that.”