Artificial Intelligence (AI) streamlines tasks in many fields, including education. Gemini is free of charge for Google Workspace for Education users since June 2024. ChatGPT has been freely available since November 2022. Teachers are using AI to streamline planning tasks and organisation tasks (Le Borgne Y. et al., 2023). Using AI to generate mid-year and end-of-year reports might seem like a way to save time, but there are drawbacks to consider.
Insights
Reports provide feedback and insights about students’ progress. They are more than a summary of academic achievement; they reflect a teacher’s professional understanding of that student’s progress, problem-solving, deeper thinking, and transferrable skills. Parents, caregivers, and whānau read a report to learn about their child’s specific strengths, achievements, and next learning steps rather than generic phrases such as an AI might generate.
Context
Every classroom has a unique combination of interpersonal relationships, school and community and individual student’s circumstances. Teachers take these particular contexts into account in their reports. A student may have overcome challenges to achieve average results and merit a report celebrating their resilience and progress; however, AI may not convey that nuance.
Privacy, Accuracy & Ethics
The resulting reports can misrepresent students if an AI tool input data is inaccurate, biased, or too generic. The privacy of a student’s achievement data needs to be considered. Using AI raises ethical concerns. Parents, caregivers, and whānau trust that reports are an authentic reflection of the teacher’s perspective. Using AI without transparency could be misleading, potentially damaging the credibility of the report’s information.
Reflection
Writing reports is an opportunity for the teacher to reflect on the student’s progress and recommend strategies to support them in future. Skipping this process diminishes that part of the teacher’s professional growth and the opportunity to contribute to student-focused planning.
Oversight
To conclude, teachers should be cautious about using AI to write their student’s reports. Teacher insights about students’ progress, based on the student’s context, are an important aspect of the feedback that reports provide. An AI-generated checklist or template may help, but teacher expertise, oversight, and professional input into report writing are essential.
Le Borgne Y. et al., European Commission: European Education and Culture Executive Agency, AI report – By the European Digital Education Hub's Squad on artificial intelligence in education, Publications Office of the European Union, 2023,https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2797/828281
Submitted by
Lucie Lindsay
Deputy Principal, Kōtui Ako VLN Primary