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“I’m a senior lecturer here at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. In that role, I teach qualitative research methods. I teach curriculum construction. I work with teachers from all across the globe.
There has always been cheating. People have always found ways to get around rules and regulations.
We’ve surveyed many schools in this area, and typically (the rate of) cheating has been around 72% to 75%. (In our research), we had exact schools that we had surveyed before November 2022, and then the same after. We wanted to see, ‘Did AI unleash the kraken of more cheating?’ It really didn’t. Cheating is still about that same…. It’s really high. It wasn’t good before AI, and it’s not good now.
For all educators, our goal is to help students learn and to help them think critically and to help them have skills that are going to enable them to succeed in the future. Using AI is going to be one of those skills. So I am not anti-AI.
But we do have to figure out a way to get students to not press that easy button, not to outsource the critical thinking…. And this is more than just AI; it’s also TikTok and Instagram. The quick-switching of attention at all times is really having an impact on brain development.
“Research is showing that students think they learn more when they’re using AI, and it turns out they’re actually not.”
Denise Pope
When do students not cheat? When they’re super excited about something. If you go to the robotics club at Gunn High School, they are not using AI to cheat. It’s not even a concept, right? You’re using AI to help you build the better robot for the competition that you’re going to do across town. When they’re putting on a play, when they are in sports – if you think about those times when students don’t cheat, they are engaged, they are motivated, they see the purpose of what they’re learning, they feel supported by adults and peers. What we’re trying to recreate in the classroom is that context of engagement and belonging and motivation…. I really want to get out of having students engage in moral and virtuous behavior because they’re afraid of punishment. I really want to get into incentivizing virtuous and moral behavior because they are interested.
When you’re completely overloaded, when you believe that you need to have top grades to get into top colleges, when there’s pressure from parents and teachers and peers and competition, you are going to do things that you’re not proud of. (Students think), “I don’t have a choice. I’m completely overloaded.”
When I was growing up, we had something called Spark Notes. But when you (use) that, and then you don’t follow up with actually reading the book, you are missing some key components of what we hope students learn about literature – about understanding nuance, about aesthetics, about understanding history and having it not repeat itself.
Research is showing that students think that they learn more when they’re using AI, and it turns out they’re actually not. When they use it to save time or to help in a crunch, then they are not taking the time to actually learn the material. I am very concerned about a lack of skills as we move on, and that is what we’re seeing at the higher education level, right? The lack of skills.
I am greatly worried for our society. I think we’ve already seen very scary repercussions politically, and we’re going to see it continue. As a society, you need critical thinkers. Full stop.
Student use of AI is one topic, but AI in the profession can be and has been a game changer in many ways. Just think about designing curriculum for a heterogeneous class… Now, with a few keystrokes, I can say, ‘Can you make this document accessible for these kinds of learners or someone at this level? Can you design a curriculum that will meet the interests and skill levels of a wide variety of students?’….[There’s] so many different applications that we’re finding.
I see AI as a tool that we’re learning how to use, just like any other technological advance – whiteboards, computers, calculators. I’m not saying it’s exactly the same, but we need to use this tool in a way to enhance learning and enhance critical thinking.
There are amazing resources for equity that AI opens up. I feel like AI can be really positive in the way of addressing equity, and also I’m worried about how it’s going to be used that will further inequity. (But) here’s the other equity piece. So many people in industry are saying, ‘We’re only going to hire people who have skills to use AI proficiently.’
I worry in many schools where they don’t have the technological resources that this is just going to be yet another bar put in front of kids. I really worry that that’s going to hurt the kids who most need the instruction and help on using AI correctly for a future workplace, you know, for future employment.”
Denise Pope is a senior lecturer and researcher in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. She is the co-founder of Challenge Success, a nonprofit focused on education.
This profile is one of nineteen featured in the “Humans in an age of AI” portrait series. See more profiles here.
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