HOLLAND, MI – When history and government teacher Brian Taylor first toyed with the idea of using artificial intelligence (AI) in his West Ottawa Public Schools classroom, he didn’t meet unilateral enthusiasm from the district.

“All of our websites used to be blocked,” he said, in an attempt to limit students from using the many newly-created AI systems that perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence.

Generative AI can be used to recognize patterns, solve equations and write papers – and that is why some educators worry about its more frequent use in schools.

Others argue that ignoring AI is not going to prevent cheating. They advocate teaching students how to use AI in a way that will benefit them in the world, while educating them about potential pitfalls.

Less than 30% of 1,000 teachers currently use AI in the classroom, a June 2024 survey by online learning and professional development nonprofit Michigan Virtual found.

Teachers surveyed across Michigan said that their top concerns, and the issues that have stopped them from using AI in the classroom so far, are student misuse, or cheating, and ethics.

AI doesn’t appear to be going away, however, and as more employers hire new graduates armed with AI knowledge, some administrators are now taking the opportunity to adapt their districts.

The current West Ottawa administration is more open to the use of AI in the classroom, and Taylor is a pioneering member of the school’s technology team, where he tests new AI strategies with his students.

Taylor said the goal is to help his students learn how to use AI in a way that will benefit them in the real world and educate them about potential pitfalls.

“You can’t really stop AI because kids use it anyway,” Taylor said. “So we have unblocked things… and we’re just trying to get people to use it appropriately.”

With AI comes cheating challenges

Owen Graham, a junior at West Ottawa High School, said while a number of students in his classes use AI to help them study or only for sanctioned school assignments, others use it to cheat.

Graham said he sees it most in classes where the curriculum revolves around writing papers or essays.

“You have a really good resource in front of you,” he said, “but at the same time it definitely could go both ways, where you could want to cheat because you don’t want to have to do all the rest of the work.”

Aaron Baughman, the former assistant superintendent of instruction at Northville Public Schools (NPS) and now AI strategist with Michigan Virtual, said he jokes that “90% of kids have used (AI), and the other 10% are liars.”

“It’s going to be used,” he said.

Whether it becomes a “digital vegetable,” something providing enrichment to students, or a “digital candy” is up to educators, Baughman said.

According to research by Stanford University, however, the number of students cheating as a direct result of access to AI may be less than expected.

In an article by the Stanford Graduate School of Education, senior lecturer Denise Pope said between 60 and 70% of students self-reported engaging in at least one cheating behavior prior to the public launch of one AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in 2022.

That percentage stayed around the same in 2023 surveys when anonymous students were asked about using AI to cheat specifically, Pope said.

Todd Tulgestke, West Ottawa’s Associate Superintendent of Instructional Services, said there’s lots that needs to be considered to ensure that AI doesn’t replace the authentic work of students.

“AI can easily replace the writing of a paper, so how do you get students to authentically express their thoughts, ideas and views in another way,” he said. “What are skills that are not replaceable, and how do we build those into our assessment systems?”

Tulgestke added that he feels that some students are afraid to use AI at all, because of the association with cheating.

“There’s, hesitancy (about) what is your authentic work versus what is not? We’ve got to do a lot of thinking and training around that,” he said.

At the same time, AI “isn’t something that schools can ignore,” he said. “That’s just not a reality, at least not one that West Ottawa is going to pursue.”

Graham said using AI in his West Ottawa classroom has helped him understand the pitfalls that can come from also using it for unsanctioned help.

AI models can “hallucinate,” or generate incorrect or misleading information if they’re not trained correctly or aren’t given enough information, and Graham said that knowledge may help deter other students from blindly trusting it with assignments.

In cases where AI hallucinates, Taylor said he uses it as an educational opportunity, talking with students about why it might provide false information.

This helps students become more technologically literate, he said.

“I saw this quote somewhere that ‘AI is not going to take your job in the future, but someone who knows how to use AI will take your job,’” he said. “I think it is good to use when we can help support and guide and not try to fool the teacher.”

AI implementation across the state is still slow

In part due to cheating concerns but for a myriad of reasons, Michigan teachers have been slow to implement AI on a widespread scale, according to the June 2024 survey by Michigan Virtual, which found less than 30% of 1,000 teachers use AI in the classroom.

The survey was the product of an AI statewide workgroup of Michigan educators, from teachers and administrators to support staff. Of those surveyed, 362 were teachers and 139 were building principals and their assistants.

The state Department of Education (MDE) does not similarly track AI usage in schools.

As of December 2024, MDE has shared guidance with schools encouraging “each district to start or continue conversations regarding use or implementation of AI tools.”

At West Ottawa, the number of teachers using AI as of Fall of 2024 was closer to 10%, Taylor said. The district enrolled a little over 6,700 students as of the 2023-24 school year, and has slightly under 500 teachers on its payroll, according to state data.

At a state level, surveyed teachers who said they’re not using AI in the classroom now only reported exploring further use 31.8% of the time, while 43% said they had no plans to use AI.

When asked to rate their level of trust from 0-100, teachers rated their trust level at 43.7 on average. Superintendents/assistant superintendents rated AI trust higher, at 57.2.

Over 13% of respondents cited inappropriate student use as their biggest AI-related concern, while 12% referenced overdependence on technology and a little over 11% expressed concern about privacy and data security.

District-wide approach to implementing AI helps

Baughman said Northville Public Schools, located less than 20 miles northeast of Ann Arbor, has figured out a way to apply AI across its school buildings while addressing teacher concerns.

Northville Public Schools brought in Michigan Virtual last year to start professional development work with AI, he said, before having 30-40 educators pilot several AI tools. They tried “everything we could do to break them and see what it would do.”

Through this process, “we landed on tools that we felt were really viable, safe and protected,” Baughman said.

From there, the district held several public workshops at board meetings before adopting 10 AI tools for approved use across the district.

While not everyone is using the AI tools on a daily basis yet, Baughman said he believes more than half of the district’s 400 teachers have implemented them. While parents have questions, no one has yet opted their student out of using AI.

“Most people are hesitant at first, and with good reason. It’s something they don’t understand,” Baughman said.

He said what’s made the difference at Northville is the support from leadership, including the district’s superintendent and school board, and “knowing that we’ve vetted these tools.”

Now, Baughman said other districts are beginning to work on similar pilots.

Ben Talsma, an AI specialist at the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, said the 2024-25 school year feels like the first where every school has some teachers using AI, even if their districts haven’t yet looked into policies.

Kelly Dutcher, the superintendent at Harbor Light Christian in Harbor Springs, said her school is still in the beginning stages of using AI, but is taking the same district-wide approach to implementing it.

This year, the district is “fact finding” and testing out different AI platforms before putting more stringent guardrails in place in the summer.

At West Ottawa, Tulgestke said district administrators have been trying to educate themselves and their teachers on AI for a little over a year, bringing in guest speakers and offering professional development.

While a small group of teachers have become the early adopters, Tulgestke said the ultimate goal is district-wide adoption of an AI platform that’s “a little more controllable” and designed for schools.

‘There’s so many platforms out there that it’s hard to wrap your head around all of them,” he said. “Of course, we have a lot of people using ChatGPT, but there’s a couple (programs) that are really for schools in particular, that do a good job of protecting student data.”

Tulgestke said the district’s board has been supportive of the idea because of the way that area employers are beginning to use AI and require employees to do the same.

338% surge in West Michigan AI job postings prompts GVSU to create new degrees

“All of the employers that we talk to, the large employers in the Holland area, they all are headed towards some form of AI competency in their hiring process,” he said. “That is a really short-term change that’s happened very quickly.”

Teachers using AI say it saves time, spices up assignments

Taylor said while using AI with classroom supervision helps students better understand its complexities, it can also simply make assignments more entertaining.

Like other students in Advanced Placement (AP) courses across the state, AP government students he teaches this year will learn about curriculum-required Supreme Court cases.

However, instead of just reading about them, which Taylor said “can be boring,” students in his class will use AI to create a two-or-three act play using exact words from the court transcript. Then, they’ll read the play aloud in class.

“I try to use AI to have them do something they couldn’t do before, and I supervise them,” he said.

In government class, Taylor said he teaches students about the major political party platforms by having them use AI to create a unique platform they believe most Americans would resonate with.

The students must create a unique name and a logo, he said. In the past, one student came up with “Republi-crat,” or a platform based on half Republican and half Democratic values.

Talsma said the practice of using AI as a tool can prepare students to use it practically in the future and serves as a good academic exercise.

“I love how this shifts the mindset,” he said. “Instead of thinking of (AI) as a search engine that’s just going to give you answers, you become a much better thinker when you think of it as a collaborator.”

Talsma said more than just providing benefits to students, using AI in the classroom can also help save teachers time.

“If you want to come up with a lesson plan, say you are working on a lesson plan for the rock cycle, you can go to ChatGPT or another large language model and say, ‘Hey, could you make me a lesson about the rock cycle?’ In 30 seconds, there it is,” he said.

Even after tweaking the plans AI generates, Talsma said it’s much faster to respond to an already-created draft than to have to make a new one.

Teachers can also more easily change content to help students who are struggling or those who may need more of a challenge, he said.

“It can function as a teaching assistant,” Talsma said. “It can do that grunt work so you can function as the executive, as the educator.”

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