“I Once Thought Typing Felt Like Cheating”

 

After a full year of researching the implications of AI in teaching and learning in the context of my counselling

class, it was finally time to present my findings during Adult Learning Wales’ PD Week.

I was admittedly nervous. Even though I had done it last year, the prospect of being judged on this year-long

project was nerve-racking.

But I could not have been more wrong about the reception it received from my colleagues. For a start, I had a

very good turnout, which in itself showed the level of interest in the topic I had tackled.

AI is on everyone’s lips. Is it good? Is it bad? Are we cheating? Are we dumbing ourselves down?

And while I spent time looking at ways to move with the times, I found myself thinking that the evolution of IT

has been much more dramatic than the influence of AI we are experiencing now.

I remember a time when you did it all by hand. You spent hours looking for the right books. You held a tangible

copy in your hands and searched for knowledge within a quantity of information that, at times, felt overwhelming.

My first degree was in English Language almost 30 years ago, and back then, the legwork required simply to

achieve a pass was enormous. It took much more than a laptop and good internet access.

Although, of course, that was coming.

I think my first year was one of the first times we were told that we had to type our dissertations. We also had to

print them and post them before a certain time, keeping the Post Office proof that we had done so.

I remember thinking how much easier everything would be if I had access to all of this technology at home.

When I did eventually get my very own desktop computer, it took up so much space that my desk had very

little room left for writing by hand.

And I did miss writing.

The pleasure of seeing those lines on paper, making sense and showing real work.

But then typing became the new norm. And that too, I enjoyed. The clicking of the keys, the speed at which

I could get things done, the regularity of the words on the page.

It felt almost like cheating then.

The skills I had learnt as a child, to write neatly and legibly, were suddenly no longer required to achieve a pass.

Looking even further back, I remember when my mother brought home our first computer. It was the late 1980s.

She had been a computer programmer for IBM, and we were the first in our street to have one.

It felt as though the future had landed in our home and, as we now know, it never left.

With technology constantly upgrading, it is no surprise that we also have to evolve in the way we use those tools.

It would seem rather time-consuming now to go to a library and research books in the same way when we can

access so many of them, and so much information, at the click of a few keys.

When I first started using IT, I could foresee just how incredible it might become. I dreamt of a little assistant

that would do all the hard, time-consuming legwork while I could focus on learning, thinking and being more

efficient.

Even as a teacher, I adored using PowerPoint when it first came out. It made my lessons so much better, so much

more fun and so much more interactive for my pupils. I wanted not just to be good at using it, but somehow to

master it and use it to my advantage.

As time passed, technology went above and beyond anything I could have imagined, but my need to learn has

never left me.

I see the surge in AI use being given a lot of bad press and, in the dystopian corner of my brain, I can see how

it could be dangerous.

Yet I can also see how much better it makes me as a tutor.

How much more efficient I have become. How quickly I can turn my thoughts into something tangible:

a worksheet, a quiz, a game or an activity. Things that would have taken me so much longer before.

But AI is not the entire topic of my research. Part of it was about understanding why some of us are all for it,

while others are reluctant.

It was about how some of my learners see its potential to give them a learning experience that includes and

embraces updated technology; how others are scared of it; and how some simply refuse to engage with it.

So, are we heading towards a dystopian learning environment where tutors are no longer needed?

I don’t think so.

Human expertise can be copied, but not the desire to see others grow.

AI can pretend to care, but caring is, above all, human.

And I have seen how secondary-school pupils treat their laptops, so as far as robot teachers are concerned...

I don’t think they’re quite ready for classroom management yet.