Every Queensland state school will have access to a homegrown artificial intelligence program by the start of June, the government has announced, as an expert warned there was a right and wrong way to roll out the technology.
The $1.5 million Corella AI program was created by the Education Department, and offers chatbot and assistant functions for both teachers and students. So far, only year 9 and 10 students have been cleared to use it, with parental approval.
On Friday, Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the rollout would include teaching on how to correctly use AI.
“Corella is a tool for the future, and we’re embracing this cutting-edge technology to help students learn how to use AI responsibly and think critically about the information they’re working with,” he said.
That correct use of the tool was crucial, said Dr Luke Rowe, an expert on AI in learning from the Australian Catholic University’s National School of Education.
“We know from the research, if you give students chatbots, and they use them willy-nilly in any way they want, they’re not going use them productively … it’s too vague,” he said.
“We need to attack this issue a lot more directly in our educational settings, particularly primary school and high school settings.
“The conversations need to start early and often in regard to what it is, what it’s going to be good for in society, what it can be used for in a detrimental sense as well as for the good of people, [and] what does it mean for the environment.”
As P&Cs Queensland released a formal position on AI earlier this week, chief executive Timothy Horne said parents felt the state had not been clear about how much would creep into the classroom.
“Parents are clearly telling us they are not yet part of this conversation. There is strong interest in AI, but also genuine concern about how it is being used,” he said.
The department said students could use Corella AI to brainstorm, check, draft, revise, research and summarise information.
Rowe said proper use of AI software spanned from learning how to properly craft a prompt in a chatbot, to understanding what subjects the software was – and was not – useful for.
“This is the learning about AI question, which is separate from learning with AI,” he said.
Rowe suggested schools needed to carve out time to learn about AI itself, not simply as a tool used to learn in other subjects.
If schools could not teach students fundamental research and critical thinking skills that were required to properly use AI, he said students would effectively be outsourcing their learning.
“The old school computers are the ones between our ears, and they tend to be the best computers to learn from,” he said.
“Not just the ones between our own ears, but the ones in the room – the teacher, the other students – so we should not ignore those rich resources in the classroom just because we’ve got a new toy to play with.”
The minister said the Education Department would expand the program to include year 7 and 8 students from June this year.
The department was also in talks with the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority about integrating the program into senior years.
Teachers have been given training modules on how to use Corella for crafting lesson plans and creating assessment tasks, but have been told they cannot use it for grading.
“It’s a totally different story when we’re talking about teachers,” Rowe said.
“In plain terms, if I can get AI to build the assessment rubric for me, I can reallocate the mental load and effort back to another activity that might enrich my classroom and help with my students more.”
The department said the software was hosted internally, meaning students could upload any information they would normally access in a classroom without compromising safety.
It said there were strong safeguards in place to make sure data was secure.
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