Curious Conversations, a Research Podcast

Travis (00:04)

How do we help students become authentic learners in a world that is increasingly full of artificial intelligence? For my seven-year-old, AI is already a part of his everyday lingo. Truth be told, I'm not really sure what exactly he's learning about it in school, how much he's using it, much less what he needs to learn about it for the future. And, how can he be taught these things in a way that he ends up viewing artificial intelligence as a tool rather than just some sort of digital cheat sheet? Well,

Thankfully, that is the expertise of Virginia Tech's Sally Hamouda

Sally Hamouda (00:33)

The way we are giving the assignments to the students should change now in the era of AI, Instead of making a big goal, you know, cut it down to smaller goals that reflect on what you teach them, then they are constantly reflecting on their learning.

Travis (00:50)

Sally's a collegiate professor and the outreach lead in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. Her research spans computer science education, educational technology, AI literacy, learning analytics, data visualization, and computer science education. So Sally was the perfect person for me to talk to to help me better understand what kids, educators, and even us parents need to know about how to best educate people in this landscape with so much emerging technology. I'm Travis Williams.

And this is Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

Travis (01:24)

I know that you've been working a lot in this space with artificial intelligence and specifically K twelve education teachers, students. And so I thought maybe a good place to start this conversation might simply kind of be to lay out the landscape of of what artificial intelligence actually looks like in those spaces. So when we talk about AI in the classroom, the K twelve classroom, what What are we talking about?

Sally Hamouda (01:49)

Right. So when we talk about AI in the classroom, we're not just talking about chatting or chat GPT or all of these chatbots. It's more than that. So maybe, you know, every tool that a student uses, Canvas, Google Classroom, uses AI in some way or another to adjust the student experience. teachers are using AI now to adjust their feedback and make sure that the rubrics are aligned with with their guidance to the students. So AI is now used as a study buddy for the students and also as a teaching assistant for the teachers now. And they don't realize that most of the tools that they are using right now, learning management systems, are all having AI features inside them to enhance their experience.

Travis (02:35)

Wow. So is it actually being used a l maybe a little bit more in the classroom than the average person might even realize, or maybe even the average student realizes?

Sally Hamouda (02:43)

Right. And if you I worked in recommendation systems before I worked for Microsoft Research back in twenty ten and then I went back in twenty eighteen. So I worked in recommendation systems. So we used to write an algorithm to make recommendations. So we had a very nice one where we actually you write an email and then it would suggest for you the sender.

So, and this was going to be part of Outlook. So, what I'm trying to say is the algorithm takes a long time to be trained and so on now with AI and now with the hardware expansion and the data centers are all these things, now these things are much faster, right? So that's how AI is now introduced in every single tool that everyone is using through K12 or even other tools that we use every single day.

Travis (03:26)

Yeah, that's fascinating to to just simply think about. And I know that it's involved in a lot of the different tools that I simply use all the time. Well, what do you think some skills are that students, maybe by age, really need to know related to to artificial intelligence?

Sally Hamouda (03:42)

You know what when you drive a car, you don't have to be a mechanic to drive a car, right? But it helps a little bit to know about the mechanics of a car, right? How to read the dashboard on the car if you have a warning. If you go to a repair shop, then you know a little bit of what they are talking about as mechanics, right? As people there. So the skills that I think students need to know, elementary school students, b I have actually elementary, middle and high school kids myself. So my elementary school kid is a fifth grader, he has to turn in his multiplication chart every Monday, and he's very annoyed because his brother, who's a ninth grader, is actually uses a calculator and he keeps asking me, Why don't I use a calculator to turn in my multiplication chart, right? So I've tried to convince him that you need to understand how to mul multiply first.

And then when you reach to a stage where in algebra one, you can now use the calculator because it's now getting more complicated. So elementary school kids should know that there is an AI tool, we can use it for help, but not for solving our homeworks because they tend sometimes to use it to solve their homework. Now, when they are middle schoolers and now they learn about data, they need to learn about the data that we're feeding to AI. So it can be good data or bad data, right? So you're training the the AI when you prompt the AI how to prompt it in a in a good way. And I I tell my kids sometimes it's like food when you eat bad food, you're having you know a stomach ache or bad output, right? It's the same thing. When you feed AI bad data or not good representative, then you're getting bad results. So that's what I think middle schooler can think and learn about the data and what you're feeding to the AI and where is the answers are coming from. Like if you give it a certain prompt, where are the answers are coming from? Can we trust the answers or not? Now as high schoolers they can now learn about and even middle schoolers can learn about the simple algorithms that AI can do, right? And what are the approaches that they can do. And as a high schooler, they need to understand the ethics of using AI, the privacy. And even middle schoolers since they are more involved now with AI, They need to understand how it works and how to protect our privacy, what to share with AI, what not to share with AI, and how to use it in a responsible way.

Travis (06:01)

Yeah, I love the food analogy. it really hits home because my my son had a a bad experience with eating too much. I believe they were Twizzlers or something at one point. He he ate an entire pack of them. And, he very quickly learned that, you don't just want to overindulge specifically in candy, in a very a very salient way, let's just say. I know that some of the work that you do is also though with with teachers and so when you're working with, I guess, educators, what do you tell them about maybe ways they can approach artificial intelligence so that students don't just see it as a as a digital cheat sheet necessarily?

Sally Hamouda (06:52)

So I always tell my students and also when I meet teachers, I tell them AI sh can support your thinking or should support your thinking, but should not replace your thinking. So at the end of the day, you should learn, as I said, like you should learn multiplication because I tell my kid if we're on in the farmers market on a Saturday and we're buying something that's you know, a few things that w we have to learn how to compute simple, do simple addition and multiplications. We don't have to have to get our phones and do the multiplications or additions. We should be able to do those simple things. So talking about the cheat sheet here, now the way we are giving the assignments to the students should change now in the era of AI, right? And instead of looking at the final product, and this is something I do and other educators do as well, and instead of tell them, write an essay about climate change, for example, right? or for me, make this project that's a database project. Instead of making a big goal, you know, cut it down to smaller goals that reflect on what you teach them, right? So that's one thing. When you cut it down to smaller goals and then continuously measure their understanding along the way until they reach to the big goal, which is writing a big essay or making a database project, or whatever project they are working on, then they are constantly reflecting on their learning. They are learning something, applying it, and then reflecting. And this really works well if we do a lot of in-class activities, if we do peer evaluations, which actually works. And I see educators now are doing this. Like someone is writing something, and then another student is evaluating them now we also ask the students sometimes generate this using AI and do it yourself and then compare both and what do you think about it? So these are creative ways that educators do so that the students are still struggling with understanding and getting those. I I I watch your previous podcast, The Friction and Productive Struggling, and at the at the end of the day they are learning and see how AI actually produces the answer that I was hoping for.

Travis (09:03)

Well, thank you for listening to the past podcast. I was a big fan of Rishi and and his ideas about friction and the value of that to learning. And it sounds like that you are as well. And it also kind of sounds like that maybe one of the solutions is what what we talked about in my day as show your work with a math problem. You have to show your don't just show me the answer.

Sally Hamouda (09:19)

Yes.

Travis (09:20)

Well, I know with a lot of educators and just a lot of school schools in general, there's been a lot of conversation about about screen time and about how much students should, be in front of a screen, whether it be AI or not. But I am curious related to artificial intelligence. what advice can you give to educators when it comes to to maybe balancing using some of these emerging technologies with those traditional teaching models?

Sally Hamouda (09:46)

Yeah, so one thing as as I said, the example of the calculator, right? So it looks like AI is now the calculator, is now the GPS, right? So if we are using the GPS constantly, we don't use GPS every single day to go from home to work, right? Because we know how to navigate. If we over relied on AI, if we over relied on the GPS, then we will never be able to navigate. So the thing here, again, redesigning our assignments for the students, help the educators actually know exactly what the students are struggling with. Also revisiting our materials, revisiting our concepts that we convey to the students and the misconceptions they have. This is one of the big things that I really like is if a student has a certain misconception, then the assignment should add as the misconception, right? And this is where we

We catch some problem students, if they are giving things to AI, then they don't know that they have the misconception, right? So they just submit the answer and go with it. So you know, a recommendation is to revisit our curriculum, to revisit our concepts, to revisit our activities and to do more more unplugged activities as you talked about screen time, because screen time is really going up for our kids and all the K-12 one of the things that I really work on that I really like to work on these days is building unplugged activities for students, which is learning computers without a computer or learning AI without an AI. And we are running this in the Science Festival that's coming next weekend.

So we're running how to learn AI, reinforcement learning, which is basically how we train your dog using treats and so it's the exact same analogy. But actually we're doing Skittles and we're doing candies so that we teach kids AI, the concepts, the basic algorithms without a computer. And

We encourage teachers actually to we build kits for the teachers and for the students to use, and we encourage teachers to use things that are unplugged to keep students out of the screens as much as we can and to have them interact with each other as we do peer evaluations in class, as I said, or they reflect on each other's using discussions instead of reflecting on Canvas. So all of these things help them getting out of the screen, getting to know and interact with their peers as well.

Travis (12:09)

It sounds like that maybe better understanding artificial intelligence might help students also get a better grasp on that idea of that good and bad data and how it's is using. Is that the concept, I guess, there?

Sally Hamouda (12:19)

Exactly. So the research showed that if if someone understands how AI works, they can be a better user for AI. Because at the end of the day, you can evaluate what's given to you as an answer. You can critically think about how it is being generated and why it's being generated like this. You can add your own flavor as a person, like your own human nature to it, right? so yes, knowing about AI makes you a better user for AI and for most of our kids and K twelve students they will end up using AI, whether they are going to be a doctor or an engineer or, you know, even working transportation, every everything now now uses AI.

Travis (12:57)

Well, you mentioned before the idea that AI could be used a tutor in in some sense with some students. So I'm curious, what do you see artificial intelligence role as maybe helping balance out some equity among students?

Sally Hamouda (13:09)

Yeah, so some students don't have the same exact skills as other students, right? So maybe a student is very good in math, maybe another student is good at history and so on, right? So they need extra help, and sometimes this extra help is needed out of the class, like when they go back from school, right? At home. Maybe the parents cannot help them, or they don't they cannot afford a tutor, or it's not easy for them to get a tutor. So in this case.

AI can help them, right? but they have to understand again. So they can use AI to check their answers and it really depends on the subject. So if it's math, sometimes complicated math is not really done well by AI. If it's other subjects, it can be it can be helpful. they can ask AI to do an analogy for them, like you know, explain for me photosynthesis using a soccer analogy if they like soccer, things like that, or football analogy. So they can actually

Use AI as a tutor that can help them understand basic concepts, you know, with an analogy that actually makes them understand it well.

Travis (14:11)

Wow, so almost like a personalized learning service that AI could provide outside of the classroom. That's

Sally Hamouda (14:13)

Exactly. Yes, exactly.

Travis (14:17)

That sounds really cool. It sounds like it actually would be really helpful for me, even as an adult. I have some more of that and I should lean into it. But I I'm curious when it comes to parents, we haven't really talked about them, but I see them kind of as the the third leg maybe to the educational stool if that analogy makes sense. But what should parents be paying attention to in this space?

Sally Hamouda (14:37)

Right. So the parents don't have to be AI experts, of course, but they should pay attention to to the critical thinking of their kids, right? If their their kids are relying a lot on AI, so maybe this, you know, will lower their critical thinking, right? So thinking about AI, like instead of asking the kids, did you use AI? maybe how did you check if this answer is correct? Right. So imagine that

My son is coming to me with a a cake that looks perfect, and he said to me, I bake this cake for you, right? And I feel like it's a store-made cake, right? It's not like a baked at home, right? So it's the same idea. Like if if they are bringing some solutions or some answers that looks really generated, so maybe we can talk to them about why, you know, how to evaluate the AI answer. That's one thing. The other thing is

Talking about privacy, of course, what to share with AI, what not to share. This is a big thing. do you share your address? Do you share family data? Do you share what? Because we don't know where is this data is going to end up, you know, where. And also thinking about the over reliance on in AI. are you over relying on it? Are the kids using it in every single assignment and every single thing that they would like to do? Even art, you know, sometimes I ask my kids to do this poster, they just go to AI and ask them to do the poster. Back in the days, we used to use paint, we used to use Photoshop and all these things that actually helps us. you know, not being artists, but helps us with the creativity in general, right? and as you said also, making sure that they balance the on-screen and off-screen, right?

Time and thinking about how to verify and how to find out what's missing, right? So sometimes as adults, we use AI to redraft an email or to do a calendar invite or whatever we need, right? And then the AI is missing a huge piece, right? And we only humans can detect it. So parents should actually warn their kids and their students that.

AI might be missing important pieces because it's not a human, it's still a machine that produces those answers.

Travis (16:47)

That's really fascinating and it does really piggyback off a lot of what the other conversation that I had, the previous conversation that I had with Rishi was talking about about developing really good judgment when it comes to AI. So it's really interesting and and fascinating that we can start to do that at a at a young, young level. It's also really cool to me that you're not only teaching this, but you're also living it as a parent and and with

Sally Hamouda (17:07)

Exactly.

Travis (17:08)

A diverse age group that you are. That's that's really cool.

Sally Hamouda (17:10)

Right.

Travis (17:11)

What's something or is there anything that your kids have brought related to this subject that you have been surprised by?

Sally Hamouda (17:20)

Right. Yeah, that's that's a very good question because my oldest is against using AI. not that he's not using it, but he read a lot about the i environmental effect of AI and how those data centers are going to take out water and then it's a drinking water that evaporates and then we're never going to have it back. And he said, You guys are responsible for the next generation. So because you're now all of you are using AI and we got we and our kids got to live this reality of Don't know what will happen, whether we'll have drinking water, not electricity is now, people are they know that these data centers and how AI is fast because there are huge computing machines that are doing this for us, right? Not because there is anything else. So we're paying, we're going to pay for this. So that was surprising for me that a high schooler can think at this level and I think every parent also should talk about not just the ethics but the effect of AI on the environment. The educators should also inform their students that it looks easy, right? But we don't know the consequence for that in the future.

Travis (18:26)

Yeah, there's a there's a cost to everything if those parents would like to, we have a podcast episode on data centers and on the grid and electricity

Sally Hamouda (18:34)

Yes.

Travis (18:35)

So just a little plug for the the parents who might be paying attention. well, I'm really curious. There is you know, there's a lot of concern when it comes to artificial intelligence, and some of it can be quite gloomy. So I'm curious what in in this space of artificial intelligence and and education, what gives you hope?

Sally Hamouda (18:52)

I've used AI myself to generate hints for students for in my platform CodeKids. Codekids is a platform for teaching coding and AI and cybersecurity for K to 12. So I've used it myself in education setting to generate hints and also personalized hints based on the kid the student level. And I I've used it also to l localize and globalize learning resources, which means, for example, the Code Kids examples that we have are all based on Blacksburg. Like they all have the hookie bird and they all have the hands in hands pork and so on. I've also used it to globalize learning experience. So instead of having a programming example about Halloween or Thanksgiving, we have it on holidays that people in Africa celebrate. Or we have it on their and instead of cookies and bagels, we have it on food that people South Africa or someplace in Africa uses. we have it on food, we have it on clothes, we have it in celebrations and so on. So AI helped us actually to do this and AI helped us to translate those experiences so that students can relate more to what they see and what they learn. So that's the hope. I see I see AI is helping in this in a good way.

Travis (20:09)

Yeah, it definitely sounds like it's empowered you to expand your reach and how you can help other people. So maybe it can definitely

Sally Hamouda (20:14)

Yeah.

Travis (20:15)

be a vehicle for that.

Sally Hamouda (20:16)

Right, right. But not to over rely on it and every single single thing, yes.