Last year, the Academic Strategy team here at Instructure established the “Impactful Eight,” the eight themes currently impacting education on a global scale. Our team often speaks to the challenges and opportunities of integrating AI tools into education and the impact AI Literacy will have on learners around the globe. As we move beyond the fear of generative AI and focus on its effective use and the mitigation of academic integrity concerns, it’s important that we build trust in this innovative technology.
One of the most important aspects of embracing this innovative technology is fostering collaboration between edtech developers and the educational institutions they serve to ensure the applications of AI address the unique needs and meet the unique security, accessibility and privacy challenges of education.
The Future of AI in Education
Governments across the globe are beginning to provide guidance as industries and education continue to work together to understand how AI can be ethically and effectively leveraged. The US Department of Education Office of Educational Technology recently released its guide, Designing for Education with Artificial Intelligence: An Essential Guide for Developers. The guide outlines five overarching recommendations for key aspects of creating AI-powered solutions for education:
- Designing for Teaching and Learning
- Providing Evidence for Rationale and Impact
- Advancing Equity and Protecting Civil Rights
- Ensuring Safety and Security
- Promoting Transparency and Earning Trust
These recommendations help establish the groundwork for leveraging AI today and well into the future. A growing array of generative AI-powered features and functionality are being incorporated into the products that power the digital classroom. The U.S. Department of Education has been an early advocate for encouraging innovative advances in educational technology to improve teaching and learning.
Building on the Department’s prior report, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning: Insights and Recommendations, this guide seeks to inform product developers and their teams as they work to build safe and secure solutions that build trust in AI products and services for use in education. This landscape is broader than those building large language models (LLMs) or deploying chatbots; it includes all the ways existing and emerging AI capabilities can be used to further shared educational goals.
Instructure’s strategy for innovating with generative AI across our ecosystem of solutions reinforces our mission of elevating student success while amplifying the efficiency and impact of educators and ensuring equitable access to these innovative tools so that everyone can learn together. Guided at every step by feedback from members of the largest community in education, we’ve implemented a strategy that addresses their concerns and delivers AI features designed to solve their most pressing problems and build trust in this emerging and rapidly evolving technology.
Whether our schools are embracing the AI features in Canvas or our other Instructure solutions, such as Discussion Summaries, AI-powered translation, Intelligent Insights or others, leveraging the innovation delivered through our industry-leading partner network, or implementing in-house AI tools, our strategy enables our customers to confidently harness the power of AI to drive educational outcomes.
The Importance of AI Literacy
Over the last two years, generative AI has become one of the most rapidly adopted technologies in human history. Educators, students, and parents are using this innovative technology on a daily basis, and it is rapidly becoming essential to teaching and learning. And while almost all forms of technology used in education are beginning to incorporate AI, many students feel they are not fully prepared to properly leverage this technology. So, while the focus is on leveraging AI in the classroom, we may be missing the call to educate students on the ethical and productive use of AI.
According to a recent study from the Digital Education Council Global AI Student Survey 2024, 58% of students feel that they do not have sufficient Al knowledge and skills. Importantly, 72% agree that universities should offer more courses on Al literacy and 72% agree that universities should provide training for students on the effective use of Al tools. In short, students don’t feel prepared for AI and they’re expectations are that their schools will take up the responsibility for educating them on these skills.
More than half of school leaders already see the role of AI increasing in their school districts. Most experts believe that in the next few years, AI will drastically change the way we teach and learn. This parallels what we’re already seeing in our daily lives. Most people are already leveraging AI-enabled features like voice assistants, automatic mapping, and early warnings of potential credit card fraud, often without even knowing it. It’s important that we prioritize AI literacy now as a way of preparing all of society for the future.
Early adopters such as the University of Michigan has placed themselves at the forefront of this discussion, both with the development of AI tools for their students, but also by developing courses around prompt literacy for students, and even a free Canvas course on prompt literacy for K12 educators
Teaching with AI
It’s clear that Generative AI is a transformative technology that will elevate student success, empower educators, and enhance the ways we teach and learn. The changes these tools will bring are here, and it’s up to us to decide how we want to leverage them. Taking an opportunity to decide with our customers how to leverage this technology to improve teaching and learning for everyone. We believe–when implemented with an intentional, secure, and human-driven approach–Generative AI has the power to promote equitable and impactful learning experiences for everyone.
Our approach to AI is focused on students and teachers, not technology. These principles are incredibly important to consider as we explore how and when to use these tools. At Instructure, our approach to developing and releasing AI features has been deliberate and informed by feedback from our customers and end users. Through this process we’ve developed three criteria that any use of AI needs to meet:
- Intentional—When we consider where to apply AI technology, we need to focus on real, human-driven problems. AI isn’t a technology we’re going to apply to anything and everything. We’re solely focused on how these solutions will serve teachers and students and on being intentional about their application. Features like Intelligent Insights leverage AI to provide educators with rapid access to actionable data to help keep students on track.
- Safe—Like all educational technology, we must begin by protecting student and institutional data, and ensuring transparency around the use of these tools and how they’re being implemented. Our application of the “Nutritional Facts Cards” for all AI features and partner solutions helps ensure this focus on safety and build trust in AI tools.
- Equitable—Finally, we must ensure that our use of these tools is equitable, providing access to everyone and ensuring that the technology is being used to improve and extend the educational experience. We know there are places in the world where bias exists, so we need to be thoughtful in acknowledging and addressing this and not extending these problems. Tools like AI-powered translation in Canvas also extend access to students and their families with diverse language backgrounds.
For many educators, already short on time and overloaded with administrative tasks, integrating AI solutions into their teaching and learning can feel like an overwhelming burden. Realistically, the time spent exploring and implementing AI solutions should lead to a net positive gain in their free time, with the right support available. Thankfully, as rapidly as AI has proliferated, so have the resources to help educators, both from AI developers and from their peer institutions across the globe. Here’s a short list of some of the many tools to help educators get started:
- MIT - Generative AI for Teaching and Learning
- University of Central Florida - Vetting AI Tools
- UNSW- Examples of AI in Learning and Teaching
- University of Sydney - AI in Education Course
Building AI tools for Education
We’re just scratching the surface of ways in which generative AI will impact education. Saving educators time, delivering easy access to insights for both teachers and learners and helping students stay on track are impactful but just the first challenges to be solved. Many experts agree that the true power of AI will be realized as we begin delivering personalized learning journeys for students.
Today, we’re laying the foundation for the future with generative AI. The decisions we make today can have long-term impacts on both our educators and students but on the future of education across the globe. As we collaborate to ensure we’re solving the right problems, applying the technology ethically and productively, and working to improve AI literacy across our society, our collaboration and cooperation will be key to our success. Our goal should remain on improving education, and the lives of those we educate. AI is simply a tool to help us achieve those goals.
