AI is all around us. From banking to shopping to streaming your favorite movies, you likely use it every day. And it’s only becoming more pervasive. ChatGPT, a chatbot that relies on a generative AI engine, reached 1.7 billion users on November 30, 2023, its one-year anniversary.
Now AI is making its way into the classroom. While it poses risks if unchecked, there are benefits of artificial intelligence in education—and used thoughtfully, it can be helpful to teachers and students.
Why should AI be used in education?
AI has the potential to make educators' lives simpler while improving student outcomes. As the world becomes increasingly immersed in AI, it would benefit educators to get a handle on the technology and use it to their advantage. “The demand on teachers’ time is mind boggling,” says Aoife Dempsey, senior vice president of product management at HMH. “Any tools that can help them reach students are worth exploring.”
Teachers can lean on AI for help with tasks like lesson planning, differentiation, or assigning supplemental or remedial work. This can free up teachers to provide small-group and one-on-one support for the students who need it.
But teachers will need guidance in using AI safely and effectively. In HMH’s 2024 Educator Confidence Report, 72% of educators who use generative AI said they plan to use it even more next school year. And 76% of educators surveyed said there needs to be professional development and coaching around AI, up 18% from last year. With the right training, teachers can avoid the risks this technology may pose. One critical strategy is to always keep teachers at the helm. Check out our quick guide to AI in the classroom for more suggestions.
How can AI improve education?
Let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits of using AI to improve education for every learner. For more on the impact of generative AI on education, read HMH CEO Jack Lynch’s take.
AI allows more students a personalized learning experience.
It can be difficult to identify what 30 students in a classroom need in order to grasp a particular concept. AI can analyze a large set of data quickly, share that information with teachers in real time, and suggest ways to personalize learning and differentiate instruction to ensure every student has support.
“The curriculum used to sit in a giant set of books on the shelf in the classroom, and the teacher had to search through it to find the material that they needed,” says Andrew Goldman, executive vice president of HMH Labs. “Now, with the click of a button, AI can provide insights into what a teacher does next in the instructional moment and keep the productive conversation going. The classroom keeps humming, all because of a simple AI assist.”
AI can provide a comprehensive picture of student growth.
AI can summarize a student’s overall performance across a variety of assessments, providing teachers and families with a better picture of learning, progress, retention, and mastery. The teacher gets some time back and families get richer data.
“It’s a win-win,” says Goldman. “There’s more potential for a human touch there since teachers have more time to build relationships with students, all while opening the door to better communication with families.”
AI can facilitate collaborative learning experiences.
One proven way of encouraging students to share ideas is the “turn and talk.” But teachers can't catch all of what 30 students are saying in response to a discussion question, no matter how much they circulate around the classroom. Two best friends, for instance, may talk about their favorite TV show instead of the assigned topic. For those students who did stay on topic, it can be difficult to know if the interaction was a real learning experience.
AI can unlock the collaboration data for teachers. Classcraft, which is designed to support teachers in facilitating whole-class instruction in math and reading, now uses AI to instantly summarize all student responses in a "turn and talk." Watch the video below to see it in action. Students simply put the top point that came out of the “turn and talk” into a chat box, and AI sends a summary report to the teacher. If the "turn and talk" summary shows that students are struggling with a concept, teachers can use a list of resources for reteaching the concept.
"As AI continues to evolve in education, it offers unprecedented opportunities to support real-time classroom collaboration," says SVP of Product Management Shawn Young. "Tools like Classcraft help bridge the gap by capturing and summarizing student interactions, giving teachers the insights they need to steer conversations and address learning gaps more effectively. This empowers educators to stay focused on fostering meaningful, student-centered learning experiences while using data-driven feedback."
Watch the video above to see how AI generates a summary of a classroom discussion in Classcraft. The report shows the most common and least common responses to the discussion question, key themes, and even suggested feedback for students.
AI can make K–12 more human.
AI make education more human? EVP of HMH Labs Andrew Goldman admits this sounds like a paradox. AI may lack the human touch, but it can free up time in teachers' day, allowing them to give their students one-on-one support. This is time teachers can use for academics and to build more personal relationships with students. Without the help of AI, how much time can teachers realistically give to each student? Imagine a teacher with 150 students. If that teacher spends one minute on each student, that's two and half hours. “One minute to change a student’s life is not a whole lot,” he says. “AI support can make that time more productive. It’s an opportunity to scale teachers’ ability to connect with their students in a way they never could before.”
AI can supplement teacher coaching.
There's significant evidence showing that a high-quality coaching experience can improve a teacher’s skillset. While AI could never take the place of an actual coach, it can take on some of the tasks. The technology can make it simpler for teachers, any time of the day, to access a resource, or deepen their understanding about a program, pedagogical approach, or assessment strategy. The person-to-person coaching in HMH Coachly and other coaching services could be augmented with automated supports powered by AI.
A look at the pros and cons of AI in education
Whether you're looking into how AI can help your district or classroom, or you're concerned about its risks, consider these pros and cons of AI in education.
4 pros of AI in education and their impact
The advantages of AI in education are boundless. Here are some highlights.
1. Personalized learning: AI can tailor learning to each student’s skills and interests. When lessons are relevant to students' lives, they are more apt to stay motivated and engaged. Personalized learning solutions run the gamut. For instance, HMH offers adaptive practice with Waggle, oral fluency practice from Amira, and AI-supported writing practice and feedback in Writable.
2. Time saving: Of all the pros of AI in education, 76% of educators cited time saving as a benefit in HMH's 2024 Educator Confidence Report. Teachers don’t have the time to do everything they need to do: create lesson plans, differentiate instruction, personalize feedback, assess students, grade essays and homework—the list goes on. Generative AI can help with all of these tasks, allowing teachers time to do what only they can do: build relationships with students and provide the support students need for success in school and life.
3. Increased engagement: AI chatbots and tutors can keep students engaged in their learning by providing instant feedback, answering questions, breaking down difficult concepts, assigning practice tasks—and these bots can do this anytime, anywhere. The bottom line: students don't ever have to wait for guidance that's tailored to their particular needs. Their learning can continue uninterrupted.
4. Better insights: AI can quickly analyze large amounts of data, providing teachers with insights into where students are struggling and excelling in the curriculum. The technology can then suggest strategies for either catching students up or moving them forward. This means teachers can make informed decisions about student learning without having to spend hours wading through data.
Research has shown that tutoring with Amira’s AI-powered tutor is as effective as time with a human tutor and even more effective for multilingual learners.
4 cons of AI in education and how to address them
There are some elements of AI to watch out for and we break them down to help you manage them.
1. Inaccurate information: Teachers and students should always double-check information generated by AI because it can sometimes produce incorrect or outdated information. While this can be a great way to improve media literacy and critical thinking, educators may want more control when it comes to AI. HMH's programs keep them in the driver's seat. They can choose to turn off AI capabilities or keep them on and monitor them. HMH also evaluates tools and outputs for misinformation.
2. Bias: AI is only as good as the data set that’s used to train it. Problems arise when AI has access to data that is skewed or not fully representative. If a student poses a question to a chatbot that’s been trained using biased information, that student may get a biased response. If we’re not careful about the way we build and train AI chatbots, they can perpetuate stereotypes and social inequalities. HMH evaluates tools and outputs for bias, inaccuracy, and misinformation and considers the impact on mental health and well-being.
3. Potential cheating: Teachers worry that students will use AI to answer quiz questions, do their homework, or write their essays. Of all the cons of AI in education, plagiarism topped the list in HMH's most recent survey of educators. But when it comes to writing, there are ways for teachers to guard against plagiarism. HMH’s Writable program can scan essays for originality and deliver authorship alerts that show how a student’s writing compares with classmates’. Teachers can then decide what concerns (if any) to raise with a student.
Of course, it's important to note that students take pride in their work and don't necessarily welcome help from AI. In the Teachers in America podcast on getting started with AI (featured below), guests Kris Hagel, chief information officer of Peninsula School District in Tacoma, Washington, and John Yellowlees, the chief academic officer, discuss students who want to produce work in their own voice rather than rely on AI. “A lot of kids last year were thinking they were going to use AI for everything that they just need to turn in and get it over with. And now kids are kind of rolling that back and saying, 'No, I want to do a better job than what I’m going to get [from AI].’”
4. Job worries: Although AI in education is most often positioned as a tool for supporting overworked teachers, some educators worry that it will eventually replace them. But HMH’s Senior Vice President of Research Francie Alexander has a powerful reminder: research shows that the teacher is the most significant factor in a student’s academic success. It’s helpful, she says, to remember what AI doesn’t do for us. “It doesn’t counsel students. It doesn't see students or understand their struggles and their joys. AI can’t do a lot of the things that teachers can do with a look or a word, actions that make a tremendous difference in a child’s life.”
A new age of teaching and learning
“We are entering a golden age of EdTech,” says EVP of HMH Labs Andrew Goldman, “with emerging technologies giving us so many new opportunities to power teaching and learning.” In this new age, the benefits of AI in education are clear. Education leaders now have the opportunity to use GenAI to turn data into feedback for students more quickly than ever before. Goldman describes this as a new age of teaching and learning where AI is seamlessly integrated into the school day, more interdisciplinary, and designed around the immediate needs of teachers and students. He adds: "Supplementing teacher-student relationships with technologies like AI will reduce the administrative burden on educators and allow them to personalize instruction like never before to enable growth for every student. I am excited to see what’s to come as educators continue to embrace these new tools.”
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Our 10th annual Educator Confidence Report (ECR) reveals teachers’ views on generative AI, the state of profession, and more. Download the report today.
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