Artificial Intelligence (AI) burst into classrooms without knocking. Before educational institutions could respond, AI was shaping lesson plans, assessment tasks, and student learning. It wasn’t long before AI-generated outputs were observed in student assignments and outcomes. Moreover, the practitioners’ prevailing enthusiasm to embrace AI explore its potential is increasingly evident.
AI continues to prove itself a valuable assistant for practitioners in education because of its accessibility, ease of use, and the time and efforts it can save. However, a potential danger remains. If convenience becomes the main driver, efficiency and innovation may be prioritized over depth and pedagogical integrity. As a result, the underlying pedagogical principles and requirements of teaching and learning could be gradually neglected. Should this trend solidify, it will extend far into the future to impact generations to come. The danger will grow as AI becomes more capable and future technologies emerge. This calls for immediate action to ensure that educational practices remain grounded in the foundational pedagogical principles, which in turn enable educators to fulfil their roles: to teach young generations and prepare them for life.
The following educational principles require particular attention if education is to continue doing what it is supposed to do:
Preserving Deep Learning Despite the Convenience of AI
Teaching should maintain its goal of developing the necessary higher order thinking skills and learners’ deep understanding of what they learn. In this regard, teachers can
- Create tasks that require students to go through a process before reaching a final product. If students are required to write a report, for example, they can be encouraged to show the steps they went through starting, from brainstorming to drafting, revising and editing.
- Allow students “think time” before they respond to a question. After posing a question, students are allowed time to formulate their answers. Then, they share their responses with partners or in small groups to encourage collaboration and deeper thinking. Afterwards, they can share their insights with the class or incorporate them into their assigned tasks. Reflection can be added to extend their learning, where students think how their peer discussions have enhanced their understanding and learning.
- Engage students in contextualized learning experiences. Students can conduct interviews, focus groups, or observations within their university or community. These activities enable students to synthesize their classroom learning with data they collect. Such tasks help students construct their own learning and develop connections between theory and practice.
Enhancing Authentic Assessment
Assessment should be an integral component of the learning process rather than a separate activity that occurs only at the end of instruction. Learning experiences and assessment tasks should be constructively aligned and designed to resemble what students do in their real lives and what they are expected to do in the future. Authentic learning experiences help learners gain a deep understanding of what they learn, while authentic assessment provides educators and learners with meaningful evidence of learning. The following practice can promote relevance and authenticity:
- Students collect artifacts as evidence of their learning and include them in their assignment submissions or portfolios. For example, they can take photos of real archeological sites in their areas to enrich a report on the historical development of their community. They may also include mind maps to show their thinking during an assignment, multiple drafts of their reports, or feedback received from their peers on how to improve their poems or short stories. Other artifacts may include group planning meeting notes or photos documenting the different stages of a lab experiment.
- Allow student products to represent a synthesis of various skills they have learned. Students can be given the freedom to represent their learning outcomes in different forms, such as an oral report, story, infographic, podcast, artwork, or video.
- Engage students in fairs and exhibitions. These can be community events or activities organized by the university. They provide valuable opportunities for students to showcase their learning. In such settings, students need to be prepared to respond to audience questions and be ready to explain their work.
Engaging Socially and Emotionally
With ease of access to AI, students may become overly dependent on the machine and gradually disengage from meaningful social interaction. Designing learning and assessment tasks that engage learners in real-life situations not only gives students opportunities to practice what is meaningful in contexts beyond the classroom but also allows them to engage socially and emotionally. Integrating a social component into learning experiences can help maintain this human dimension of learning. Such practices may include:
- Pair discussions: The instructor poses a question that requires deep thinking. Students are then asked to discuss the topic with their “Face Partners” and at other times with their “Shoulder Partners”, to avoid having them always talk to the same person during discussions.
- Gallery Walks: Groups display posters showcasing their work. One member from each group stays by the display to present the work and answer questions from classmates walking around. This activity resembles an art gallery experience, encouraging interaction, discussion, and feedback.
- Tea Parties: Students receive cards containing statements related to their lesson/course content. Then, they mingle as if attending a tea party. As they move around, they stop to discuss their statements with others, sharing their thoughts and listening to different perspectives. Afterwards, they swap cards and repeat the same process with new partners.
Promoting Equity and Access
Equity in education has long been emphasized, but with the advent of AI, the challenge becomes even more pressing. There is growing concern that unequal access to technological tools may grow leading to a chasm in opportunities. Learners in under-resourced contexts may continue to lag in accessing the latest technology, digital fluency, and educator guidance, and thus miss out on opportunities that can enhance their thinking, progress, and learning. If the instructor suspects that learners have limited or no access to technology, they should take action to ensure equity and inclusion for all students. They can:
- Design tasks that require more collaboration, discussion and dialogue rather than ones that depend on high end tools.
- Request from the university leadership that students be allowed to use university resources to complete their tasks.
- Support students in tasks that require AI tools by explicitly guiding them as to where to access the tools and how to use them effectively.
- Encourage students to seek help when needed and inform them about available resources and support services withing the university.
- Engage regularly in conversations with students to understand their challenges and needs so that the instructor can respond appropriately.
As the capabilities of AI continue to expand, we will continue to be dazzled by its possibilities, which will be shaping education considerably. Yet critical questions remain: Can we resist the temptation of its convenience while designing learning experiences? And are we willing to invest the necessary effort to uphold the fundamental pedagogical principles? Answers to these questions will determine whether we are able to shape education with intention and deliberate design.
Our best bet is not to allow the speed of technology to blur our vision by reminding ourselves that pedagogy comes before technology, where the latter is utilized as leverage and support. When educators are well informed about teaching methods and the principles of learning, they are better able to root their practices in them. Moreover, educators should be informed about AI, its uses in teaching, and its limitations so that they employ it appropriately to serve student learning. In the end, the future of education will be determined by how wisely educators choose to use it, but not how powerful AI becomes.
Dr. Amal Farhat is an experienced educator and instructional coach with a career spanning both K–12 and higher education in the private and public sectors. Her work centers on cultivating professional learning communities grounded in positive, constructive collaboration among institutional stakeholders. In higher education, she has taught future educators while also supporting faculty in refining and enhancing their teaching practices. Dr. Farhat holds a PhD in Education from the Lebanese University, a diploma in Counseling in Pedagogy from Saint Joseph University, and a CAEL certification from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Siham Al Amoush is an experienced educator specializing in teacher education and higher education professional development. She obtained her PhD in Chemistry Education from Bremen University, where she researched and compared teacher beliefs in Jordan, Turkey, and Germany. She has published several papers in international journals on topics such as teacher beliefs, curriculum design, and technology integration in the classroom. Passionate about improving teacher education and supporting educators in reaching their full potential, she aims to make a difference in the education system through collaboration across sectors. Currently, she works in faculty development at the Excellence in Teaching and Learning Center at Qatar University.