It can be fun to have the opportunity to try out something brand new. Most of us would pass on being the first to test an experimental parachute or a shark-repellant swimsuit, but when it comes to tech designed to make work easier, there’s nothing to lose.
A couple of months ago, D2L rolled out a beta test program for a generative AI tool called Lumi and asked a select group of D2L Brightspace users if they’d be willing to test the quiz and practice question generative features. One of the schools that accepted this assignment is Gwinnett Online Campus (GOC), the online entity for Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) in Lawrenceville, Georgia. It’s an award-winning K-12 public school that delivers more than 7,900 course segments to students living throughout the GCPS district while serving and supporting its 180,000 full-time students.
In the following piece, Coordinator of Technology Integration at GOC Laura Herring, reports back with what they found.
An Introduction to Laura Herring
I’m a former teacher, so my background is education-based rather than technology-based. My job is to ensure that the technology we provide to our staff and students supports our instructional goals here at GOC. When we bring on new technology, I ensure it fits as seamlessly as possible with our existing tech. Brightspace is obviously a very important foundational piece.
A Rocky Past With Generative AI
Just before D2L reached out about participating in this beta program, we were struggling with how to leverage AI to support our teachers and students. Our teachers were frustrated. Some were pulling their hair out because students were using it to do their work for them. Assignments clearly generated by ChatGPT were being passed off as authentic. It was a means for students to cheat—period.
The perception of AI was leaning heavily toward the negative. But because AI isn’t going anywhere, we needed to find a way to adopt a more positive and empowered approach. The more comfortable teachers are with AI, the more they can address it with the students. In the coming years, we need to ensure our students are taught how to use it responsibly. And teachers can’t do that if they don’t have any practice using it responsibly.
So, we began with professional development. We did a book study about AI in education and looked at various ways it could be leveraged to produce content and automate tasks. When we were asked to participate in D2L’s beta program, I thought, that’s fantastic. It fits right in with what we’re trying to do.
What They Were Hoping For
We produce all content in-house. Our teachers are our content creators. We don’t use packaged content. We don’t have instructional designers. Our teachers develop everything, including quizzes and practice questions.
We’ve also recently gone to a personalized learning model where we direct the students through courses based on formative assessments. All that to say, we generate a lot of quiz questions. We’re also trying to grow our question pools, and we saw this beta test program as an opportunity to do that efficiently.
We handpicked 10 teachers who have strong institutional understanding, know the way we do things here, and understand our expectations. They were more than happy to participate in the AI beta program. Our teachers like to be on the cutting edge.
Where D2L Lumi Earned High Marks
My administrators and I absolutely love the fact that teachers are in control and must approve what’s produced. It’s their class, and they need to be satisfied with the content. Lumi allows for that. Teachers could check the questions and the distractors. They also tested the tools to see if duplications would be generated if they prompted five questions versus three, for example.
One thing they especially liked was being able to select specific content for question generation. The copy-and-paste function made this possible. It helped them zero in on the result they were looking for. After all, they’re content experts and can recognize a good question when they see it.
The interface is very nice, too. It played well with what was already there and fed right into the question library, which everyone really liked.
How AI Can Have Your Back
It’s okay to use tools to produce the best result efficiently. If you write the essay and put it in AI and ask it to tweak it for you, that’s no different than handing it to your mom or older brother for review. We do that in the real world. If I’m fired up about something, and I write an email, I’ll ask my office mate to read it before I send it. I think that’s a reasonable and intelligent practice. What we need is transparency and responsible AI use from both teachers and students.
We must continue to work with generative AI. If teachers continue to see time savings and AI continues to generate quality content, I think they will continue to use it. The more comfortable teachers are with AI, the more they can address it with the students. In the coming years, we need to ensure our students are taught how to use AI responsibly. And teachers can’t do that if they don’t have any practice with using it responsibly.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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