AI Case Study: Loreto High School

Kelly Midgley has just finished working at Loreto High School, a state comprehensive in south Manchester, as an English and Media Studies Teacher and Key Stage 3 coordinator. 

How much you are currently using AI in the classroom setting and what for (for example lesson plans), what may be holding you back if you aren’t using it regularly. 

As a teacher, I really did not start to use it until this past year. I was sceptical of AI at the start - visions of Skynet! but I started to see that actually we use AI more than we think in our daily lives, from predictive text, Alexa suggestions, and chatbots. But I didn't know how to use AI really in my teaching or how it could benefit me. It is thought that "authentic teaching" is when you design all the lessons yourself that are tailored to that class, and this is probably why some teachers may be cautious when using it. As a teacher, you are trained in learning theory and how to make lessons engaging, and I guess by using AI, all that pedagogical knowledge and "human touch" is taken out of the lesson. 

But I started to use it this year for some lesson material for Media Studies. There is so much content knowledge that is needed for the course and it can be pretty overwhelming for a busy teacher to get to grips with! Part of the qualification is production work (like coursework) and I wanted to create a really comprehensive "how to" guide for my students on a production brief (which change every year, so teachers have to constantly rewrite resources and lessons to meet these different - and sometimes quite challenging - briefs). It is worth noting that AI is allowed by students in some media production work in the qualification, but only to create images that the student "would not normally be able to create naturally, like an explosion". I could argue that if a student wants to create a high-quality production that looks professional, then students should be able to use AI in order to get a good mark. I had students that wanted to have exotic and wild backgrounds, like mountain hiking and sunny beaches, for their print productions. These may not be accessible for inner-city, pupil-premium students to get to and take pictures of, so why limit them academically by denying the use of AI to capture the vision that they have for that production? 

I would also argue that using AI effectively and appropriately is a skill that these students should have for future success. AI is clearly here to stay and it is being used widely in other industries already. The education system has a duty to ensure that students are well-prepared for the future and if we do not embrace AI now and learn to use it wisely, then we risk not preparing our students for the future. It is just one example of how the curriculum is not suited for the needs of tomorrow.  

Anyway, I digress: I used AI to create lots of text for the booklet, to create examples of the brief, and to put together text and slogans for the brief. However, I edited some of the AI text to be more specific or to maintain an appropriate tone. I am also the one who created the whole booklet and knew what had to be done at each stage, but also how to get students to retain information or apply their learning now. Using AI saved me so much time and effort and I hope that more teachers start to use it to help with their workload. The constant heavy workload was one of the reasons why I left the profession this year and I wish that I could have used AI to write all those schemes of work and assessments that just buried me! 

I am now retraining to be an Instructional Designer, which uses many transferable skills from teaching. It has made me realise how other industries are using AI far more than we do in teaching - and just how easy it can make life! It has encouraged me to use AI more in my own content and resource creation for tutoring. I think that it can have real benefits for individual learning and progress. You can create a personalised curriculum for a student with very specific prompts on what to include or what barriers that student might have - a very powerful tool for tutoring!  

How much you think ChatGPT is being used by your students to complete homework tasks, and if it is easy to tell where it been used inappropriately in assignment responses? 

I think students are maybe using AI more than what we think, and I have caught students using ChatGPT for assignments. One of my Year 11s had used ChatGPT to write his personal statement, to some hilarious misconceptions. He wants to be a lawyer but his personal statement was about his “desire to go into soliciting” or his “passion for solicitation” - clearly, an example of how AI can be used poorly by students. He did not think to edit his work or use more specific AI generative prompts. I had another student who used ChatGPT for a creative writing task, but wrote it out by hand to make it look like his own. But I knew his writing style and it was vastly different to what he could produce, which was still of good quality.  

I can see why students would use ChatCGT for their work: they wanted models to learn from, or some scaffold to get them started, or sometimes - sadly - it is just down to laziness. They face so much pressure to meet inflated target grades, compete in an unfair education system, and navigate the hazards of social media and their teens. But again, using AI will be a key skill in the future and we should be instructing students how to use it better, rather than banning it outright.  

It is easier to identify and filter students using AI on programmes, like Google Classroom. When I would set homework or assignments on Google Classroom, I could get it to identify plagiarism, and then I could make a decision about what to do with that student. Most often, I would get them to redo the task, especially if more than 25% was plagarised - this showed an over-reliance on other peoples’ content, rather than showing knowledge and skill application. 

As far you know, does your school yet have a clear policy on AI usage for A) teachers B) students  

I don't think any school I have worked at has had an AI policy in place for staff or students. Again, this is just a sign on how education is not in step with major technological changes.