Student Engagement in a Post AI world

One of the many ways in which our world will change as a result of generative AI will be the way in which students engage with school.

Even in the last few years, things have changed regarding engagement.

The pandemic brought about extremely lax policies with phones, for example. I’ve seen it in middle/high school classrooms when I coach teachers, and it’s very hard (or annoying) to enforce policies around phone use when no one else is, and having your phone out in school (and sometimes your earbuds) is just a ubiquitous part of student life.

The difference is that a couple of years ago, if you didn’t pay attention in class, it would be hard to do a project, or write an essay, or pass a quiz.

Now? Most exams can be gamed unless you have extremely tight supervision (somewhat unrealistic in a world of asynchronous and hybrid courses).

Most student essays (like your typical 5 paragraph literary analysis on Romeo and Juliet) can be generated by a large language model. With some iterative prompting and other tricks (which students are already getting good at), it may not even sound like stock AI text anymore.

To be clear, these essays are not “good.” I’ve generated a bunch just to experiment. They’re boring and lack any sort of style or character, and when you try to apply a particular “style” using prompting it can get even more ridiculous.

But that doesn’t matter. These assignments, historically, aren’t about style. They aren’t supposed be interesting. They’re about “showing what you know.” Easily gameable.

And honestly, who could blame these students?

I know if I was a high schooler, and I understood how to use generative AI better than my teachers… I would game the system, too. As it is, I barely read the assigned books in high school. Believe me, I wanted to, they sure seemed interesting… but, the adolescent brain doesn’t plan very well, so I read the bare minimum that I would need to pass my classes (which it turns out, wasn’t very much).

I know I’m not alone in this. Back then, it was quite costly to get a “cheat code” like Cliff’s notes. You had to really scour the web for something or you had to go buy a physical copy.

I haven’t tried to cheat on a literary essay in over 20 years, but I imagine it’s infinitely easier now, generative AI aside.

As a result, we now have a bunch of folks, including myself, who are thinking about the future of not only assessment.

The other side of the coin is student engagement. The way our classrooms looked yesterday (and the way teachers are assessed) will be very different in the near future.