{"id":11641,"date":"2023-11-16T15:08:01","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T20:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/?p=11641"},"modified":"2023-11-28T14:49:31","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T19:49:31","slug":"empower-teachers-with-a-proven-tool-to-counter-ai-influence-in-the-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.acadiate.com\/empower-teachers-with-a-proven-tool-to-counter-ai-influence-in-the-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Empower Teachers with A Proven Tool to Counter AI Influence in the Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"
The advent of AI as a groundbreaking technological innovation has already had a significant impact on our world and is increasingly penetrating more aspects of our society. The academic community is concerned about how it will alter the landscape of higher education. With AI, every student worldwide now has access to an on-demand personal assistant. While many students are utilizing AI to increase their productivity, some students are relying on it to do all their academic heavy-lifting and harming their intellectual development. This poses a serious threat to the value of higher education and the reputation of the higher education institution.<\/p>\n
A significant component of higher ed is educating students on particular topics, arguably, higher ed\u2019s most important function is providing the world with a reliable benchmark that an individual possesses specific knowledge. Assessing a student’s mastery of competencies is essential, especially in fields where incompetence could cause catastrophic damage, such as medical students (doctors and nurses), engineering, accounting, law, business, and more. Higher Ed institutions are responsible to their community that graduating students are indeed competent in their field, and ready to properly contribute to their assessed field in society.<\/p>\n
The widespread use of AI in higher education has made it challenging for professors to differentiate between actual work produced by students and work produced by AI-powered assistants. As a result, many in higher education are exploring various solutions to help them better evaluate and assess student competency where an AI-powered assistant is not so easily be leveraged by a student. One such solution is Digital Portfolios. Adoption of digital portfolios in academia has had limited adoption, because institutions have faced challenges in implementing them. There are multiple reasons behind this, but the primary ones are two-fold.<\/p>\n
The first reason why digital portfolios haven’t taken off in academia is because students are not educated on their true potential and many uses in showcasing themselves. Specifically, students are having difficulty distinguishing between the purpose of a portfolio used for learning and assessment, and one used for showcasing their skills to potential employers. This is not the fault of teaching and learning centers, as many of these centers have provided resources to help differentiate between the two types of digital portfolios. However, it is evident that this message is not effectively reaching students, as seen in how they use digital portfolios.<\/p>\n
Many students struggle to articulate a clear definition of what a digital portfolio should look like. Some may believe that it is a website, while others argue that it is a LinkedIn profile or a Wix page. All of these solutions are very narrow use and platform specific, limiting their utility and flexibility for constantly evolving applications. The issue with these responses is that they view portfolios as isolated technologies. Instead, students should view digital portfolios in the same way they view essays; as a communication vehicle, not just a technology. In that sense, a true digital portfolio solution needs to be flexible, adaptable and robust for a multitude of applications.<\/p>\n
When asked to explain an essay, students do not describe it as a blog, a Word document, or a pen and paper. They recognize that an essay is a written document that aims to persuade or inform a reader on a particular topic. Essays have essential components, such as an introduction with a thesis, a body, and a conclusion, that must be effectively pieced together. Essays are effective in academia because students can understand their underlying foundation, the building blocks, and how they can be used to argue any point across multiple disciplines. Once students understand how to write an essay, it becomes second nature, and they can apply it to any situation. This is the power of writing and the essay as a pedagogical foundation of higher education learning.<\/p>\n
Students need to see digital portfolios in the same light. The goal of a digital portfolio is essentially the same as an essay – it is to convince someone of something or to inform the audience of a particular topic.<\/p>\n
The process of creating an essay involves assembling content, writing, and media curation into a cohesive narrative. To achieve this, a thesis statement is necessary, as it serves as the central point of the paper, thus providing structure and direction to the essay. This concept of a thesis statement is equally important in digital portfolios. The application of a thesis statement helps to create a compelling narrative for the audience.\u00a0 Every digital portfolio should have a purpose that a specific target audience can quickly and easily understand contextually both between the content and the thesis statement.<\/p>\n
When building a digital portfolio, it’s essential to start with the end goal in mind. The purpose of the portfolio will dictate what it should contain. For example, digital portfolios can serve as an educational assessment tool, providing evidence of defined learning outcomes for academic purposes. Alternatively, they can function as a recruitment tool, showcasing skills, personality, experiences, and other employable attributes.<\/p>\n
It’s important to note that a single digital portfolio typically cannot serve multiple different purposes. An effective academic portfolio would not be an effective employment portfolio, and vice versa. Each portfolio application is being assessed and evaluated by different usage cases and audiences.\u00a0 Even within academic fields, the portfolio’s effectiveness will differ; for instance, an effective academic portfolio in philosophy would not be adequate as an academic portfolio in engineering. Similarly, an effective digital portfolio for a job opportunity at Google would not be suitable as a digital portfolio for a job opportunity at Deloitte. A digital portfolio solution needs to be designed to enable users to create quickly and easily multiple targeted portfolios for any given audience and share seamlessly.<\/p>\n
One of the reasons students don’t leverage digital portfolios to their full potential is because they don’t see them as a strategic communication tool with high impact personal outcomes. Instead, they view them as a one-time requirement for a particular class. They see them as time-consuming and require a lot of effort to set up. Students often spend hours figuring out the technology, design, content, and access for just one portfolio. This is particularly true for web-based or url solutions requiring almost programming level learning and extensive energy on layout decisions, making the exercise more focused on creating the portfolio rather than on the messaging and the content. This makes it difficult to convince them of the long-term value of digital portfolios.<\/p>\n
As a result, students don’t see the benefits of putting in the effort to create a digital portfolio, making it an uphill battle to get them on board. The solution is to simplify the process of creating digital portfolios by focusing on the essential elements, which is the content. By providing students with a solution that enables them to create multiple digital portfolios quickly, we can help them see the value of using digital portfolios as a strategic tool beyond just one class and to better adopt them as an important tool for marketing their achievements deeper into their career life.<\/p>\n