AI is shaping all aspects of life: from business and personal to the arts and education. Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay. And if we truly want to prepare our students for life, the choice becomes not whether to use AI in the classroom — it’s making sure our students are using AI effectively and ethically.
Concerns Over AI in the Classroom
Concerns over the use of AI in the AP classroom are valid. AI has been known to produce incorrect or misleading content, can reinforce bias, and has the potential to compromise the credibility of student work. Artificial intelligence can also pose a security risk if students are not mindful about the information they type into AI platforms. With these drawbacks in mind, many teachers may shy away from permitting the use of AI in the classroom.
Whenever new technology emerges, there can be confusion and alarm about its implications for education. As educators, our job is to protect our students from harm and ensure that they are acquiring not just knowledge, but also essential learning skills. Nevertheless, history has shown us time and again that we cannot stick our heads in the sand and hope the next wave of technology will turn out to be a passing trend. From calculators in the 1970s to the internet in the 1990s, new technology often turns out to be an opportunity when harnessed appropriately.
Our goal is to prepare students for the future, and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that AI will be a feature of their lives. So, we must meet this challenge head-on rather than turn a blind eye to the implications of AI in education. The question then emerges, “How do we create an environment where AI is harnessed appropriately to support student learning without compromising students’ ability to develop skills like data analysis, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving?”
It behooves us as educators to enact policies that protect our students from the hazards of AI, that educate them on the responsible usage of AI, and that foster equity across student populations for those who may not have access to AI at home. In this way, we can set our students up for success in a society where AI will be firmly ensconced.
The College Board’s Stance on AI
In 2024, the College Board launched its GenAI Studio, a resource designed to help AP educators integrate AI thoughtfully and effectively into their classrooms. This demonstrates how the College Board has embraced the perspective that artificial intelligence can be harnessed as an opportunity for learning. According to the College Board website, “Students can use AI tools as optional aids for exploration of potential topics of inquiry, initial searches for sources of information, confirming their understanding of a complex text, or checking their writing—but not rewriting—for grammar and tone.” The stated goal of the College Board is to use AI to support learning, not bypass it. Therefore, it’s still required that students develop the ability to reference primary and secondary resources, perform their own analysis and synthesis of evidence, and communicate effectively in writing without the use of artificial intelligence. The College Board enforces this policy by asserting “the right to investigate submissions where there is evidence of the inappropriate use of generative AI as an academic integrity violation and request from students copies of their interim work for review.”
When asked about AI in the AP classroom, College Board President David Coleman had this to say: “[Students] study flexibility, adaptation, and resourcefulness, because there’s no way to know exactly how [new technologies like] AI will operate … I think that interplay is essential for advancement in the AI world. We always want the check and balance of what can you do with it and what can you do without it, to see what you’re gaining separately from [the course].”
How to Implement AI Effectively in the Classroom
So how do we, as teachers, effectively implement the use of AI in the AP classroom? The answer to this question centers around the development of AI literacy skills. We need to instruct our students on how to use AI responsibly and ethically. This means showcasing the limitations of AI alongside the benefits, and discussing how AI can be used to enhance the learning process rather than circumventing it.
The ethical use of AI in the classroom will involve finding a balance in how much we should rely on AI and the extent to which we should allow AI to infiltrate the classroom. First, teachers must establish clear policies surrounding the acceptable use of AI to complete assignments. This discussion will involve creating rules about when during the learning process students are allowed to use AI. AI can be an excellent tool for simplifying complex reading assignments to make it more accessible for the striving reader. AI is a potentially good tool to use when brainstorming ideas for content, and might be permissible for editing purposes, but it’s certainly not acceptable as a tool to generate an entire essay and sidestep the process of writing. AI can be helpful to generate personalized study resources and practice questions for review, but should not be used to bypass the creativity required for designing an experiment or generating art. Differentiating these potential uses of AI for students will give them clear-cut boundaries and help them to maintain academic integrity.
Teachers can enforce such policies by requiring students to show evidence of their progress over the course of the assignment, documenting their brainstorming, rough draft, and finished products. Students should be prepared to explain when and how AI was used in the process during one-on-one conferences with the teacher. Some assignments may also be completed in class where use of AI can be restricted to ensure that students are demonstrating the skills necessary to synthesize their own finished products.
In addition to clearly outlined policies for the use of AI, students must be taught AI literacy; specifically not just the capabilities of AI, but also its limitations. As mentioned earlier, AI can produce misinformation and reinforce bias. Therefore, we need to instruct students how to critically evaluate AI output by verifying information using credible sources. We need to train our students in how to identify bias, and where to find alternative information for consideration. We need to alert them to the ethics of data privacy, ensuring that they know how to protect themselves by not entering sensitive information into public AI platforms, and recognize how personal data can be used by spear-phishing enterprises to specifically target them for identity theft or fraud. Raising our students’ awareness levels can help them think more critically about the information they release into the world and how they perceive the information that’s being generated by artificial intelligence.
In addition to setting boundaries and promoting AI literacy, we can maximize the effectiveness of artificial intelligence by mimicking the ways in which students will experience it “in the wild.” We are, after all, intending to prepare our students for the real world, so why not give them the practice in a contained and relatively safe environment? Project-based learning is an essential answer to this ideal. The real-world implications and relevance of project-based learning captures student interest organically. Project-based learning is also the perfect opportunity to implement authentic assessment, where students are creating products that can be useful in real-world scenarios. AI is specifically useful during project-based learning for brainstorming new ideas and for workflow automation, which frees students’ minds for more creative endeavors. Student–teacher conferencing and process evidence requirements are easily built into project-based learning, so teachers can monitor student use of AI in creating the final product.
Teachers Need Support to Effectively Implement Artificial Intelligence
Incorporating new technology into the classroom can be a convoluted process and mistakes will inevitably be made. We’ll need to grant teachers, administrators, students, and guardians much grace as we experience the growing pains of implementing new learning tools. Teachers will need professional development opportunities geared toward establishing structured AI protocols in their classrooms. Administrators must be willing to advocate for that support and aid in establishing school-wide guidelines for the use of AI in classrooms. Students will need policy reminders, continued guidance, and clearly written consequences for misuse of AI in their work. Parents and guardians must be invited into the discussion and made aware of school policies and the pitfalls their children may encounter. Stakeholders in education must explore the frontier of artificial intelligence together, writing and revising policy on the use of AI in education with continuous open communication. It’s vital during this ongoing process to acknowledge the permanence of artificial intelligence, to keep an open mind regarding its usefulness in the classroom, and to solicit feedback from the community so we can continue adapting policy in a way that best leverages AI as a tool for learning, while promoting its ethical use.
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About the Author
Becca Rouch earned her undergraduate degrees cum laude in biology and Spanish with a minor focus in education from the University of Florida. She went on to earn her master’s of secondary science education from the University of Florida as well. As a Hillsborough County high school teacher, Becca has taught honors biology, on-level biology, ecology, and AP environmental science (her favorite course to teach). Becca also worked for the Hillsborough County Migrant Office, creating video tutorials to supplement the curricula of migrant students. Becca lives in Tampa, Florida, with her husband and three energetic and inquisitive boys. Her hobbies include traveling, scuba diving, hiking, taking barre classes, and reading children’s novels aloud to her boys.
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