Latest / Azadeh and Guy on AI / AI Tools for Teachers- An Interview with Professor Lorraine Males

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AI Tools for Teachers- An Interview with Professor Lorraine Males · Azadeh and Guy on AI

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: And today, we have a surprise.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, yes.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: This season we decided to record everything so you get to watch our videos.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And our first guest is Dr. Lauren Mills.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do a very short introduction and then we will ask her to respond to our questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dr. Mills is the Wyoming Excellence Chair in Mathematics Education and Professor in
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: the School of Teacher Education at the University of Wyoming.
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  SPEAKER_00: Her research focuses on mathematics teacher learning,
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  SPEAKER_00: curriculum use,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the thoughtful integration of artificial intelligence to support teaching
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  SPEAKER_00: and professional decision making.
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  SPEAKER_00: She has led multiple NSF-funded projects,
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  SPEAKER_00: including work on AI-powered tools such as Colleague AI,
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  SPEAKER_00: helping bridge cutting-edge research with classroom practice.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are looking forward to exploring the future of AI in mathematics education,
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  SPEAKER_00: teacher preparation, and educational research with her today.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest,
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  SPEAKER_00: I had this great opportunity to collaborate with Dr.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Mayles last semester and also this summer.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are also doing other projects.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are collecting data.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we are working on this NSF project
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  SPEAKER_00: to see how teachers do their lesson planning using AI-powered platforms.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Dr. Mills.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to our podcast.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I've had the pleasure to work with Azadeh.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: The pleasure is all mine.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: On that project as well.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for everything you've been helping me think through as well related to AI.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So AI is really changing education very rapidly.
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  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
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  SPEAKER_01: the one thing that we all keep talking about is how fast it is changing around us
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  SPEAKER_01: and changing the things we discuss, the way we talk.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: There are new words.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: That have not been known to everybody,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: like GPT is not something that anybody more than three years ago really thought
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  SPEAKER_01: about outside of a very small group of people.
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  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly we're all talking about this and machine learning, all of these things.
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  SPEAKER_01: So with all of this change,
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  SPEAKER_01: what excites you the most about the potential of AI and what concerns you the most?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great question.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think that for me what excites me the most about AI,
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  SPEAKER_02: specifically in a teacher preparation setting,
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  SPEAKER_02: Is the ways in which pre-service teachers can use AI as an additional tool.
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  SPEAKER_02: So Adlade mentioned that my work has been around teacher lesson planning,
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  SPEAKER_02: and I've primarily worked with pre-service teachers.
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  SPEAKER_02: So before being at the University of Wyoming,
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  SPEAKER_02: I was at University of Nebraska-Lincoln for 14 years,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: where I worked with secondary math pre-service teachers.
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  SPEAKER_02: I think we underestimate how hard it is to use curriculum materials or resources,
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  SPEAKER_02: and in mathematics education, It's very curriculum dependent discipline.
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  SPEAKER_02: Whether we like that or not, that's the way it's been for many, many years.
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  SPEAKER_02: And one of my goals is to really help pre-service teachers learn how
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: to use curriculum materials in intentional ways.
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  SPEAKER_02: And that can be hard,
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  SPEAKER_02: especially if they don't have materials that are good for students,
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  SPEAKER_02: good for teachers, they're not very educative.
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  SPEAKER_02: And so AI,
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  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited about How pre-service teachers or teachers in general can use AI tools
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  SPEAKER_02: to get support when they need to adapt things
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  SPEAKER_02: or get information around what students might do in a particular problem.
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  SPEAKER_02: The models that are out there now are getting better and better
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  SPEAKER_02: at Helping teachers think about student thinking in ways.
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  SPEAKER_02: So that part to me is really exciting.
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  SPEAKER_02: For me, AI is not a tool, like I'm not using AI for AI's sake.
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  SPEAKER_02: It's another tool to help them be better practitioners.
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  SPEAKER_02: So I'm going to be honest, I don't have a lot of concerns.
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  SPEAKER_02: I know that there are concerns out there and I've talked about this with,
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  SPEAKER_02: you know,
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  SPEAKER_02: Azadeh and Megan Quist,
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  SPEAKER_02: who's another graduate student on my project,
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  SPEAKER_02: we talk about just kind of the concerns that a lot of people have.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I don't have many concerns.
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  SPEAKER_02: I don't think my concerns are with AI.
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  SPEAKER_02: I think they're with how we're helping people learn to use AI appropriately.
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  SPEAKER_02: I think that it's not really a concern.
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  SPEAKER_02: It's just a...
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  SPEAKER_02: We need to help pre-service teachers or teachers learn to prompt in ways
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  SPEAKER_02: that is useful, learn to evaluate what they're getting from AI.
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  SPEAKER_02: Those kinds of things,
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  SPEAKER_02: they're not really concerns with AI for me,
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  SPEAKER_02: but they're the things that I know I have to help.
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  SPEAKER_02: Teachers do if I'm going to engage them with any sort of AI tool.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I go back to this all the time.
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  SPEAKER_02: For math teachers, AI is just another really, really souped up version of a calculator.
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  SPEAKER_02: Like when calculators came out,
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  SPEAKER_02: it was like everyone thought,
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  SPEAKER_02: oh no, math education, we're never going to have to have teachers anymore.
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  SPEAKER_02: And like, that's not the case.
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  SPEAKER_02: But we did have to qualitatively change the way we were teaching math.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I think the same thing is true with AI.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think that two things emerge in my mind.
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  SPEAKER_01: One is that a lot of the concerns is the concern about students and really
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  SPEAKER_01: the discussion around cheating and students just not doing their homework,
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  SPEAKER_01: but instead using AI, which I think is a valid concern, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: That idea of cognitive unloading.
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  SPEAKER_01: But the second concern,
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  SPEAKER_01: and I think that's why you're not concerned with it,
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  SPEAKER_01: because I've seen you teach and we've talked about teaching many times,
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  SPEAKER_01: you are focused on process.
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  SPEAKER_01: And when you're focused on process,
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  SPEAKER_01: AI can only be a helpful device because you're not focused on the final product or
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  SPEAKER_01: on the grade or on that part of it, you're focused on the process.
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  SPEAKER_01: When people are focused on a product,
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  SPEAKER_01: like give me an essay and I'm going to judge the essay on its merits,
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm not interested in the process, that's where AI can become a shortcut.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's part of the reason that it makes it easier.
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  SPEAKER_01: If you're focused on process, then you're a lot less worried.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
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  SPEAKER_00: the other thing that is interesting to me is that during the data collection phase
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  SPEAKER_00: that we are doing for this project,
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  SPEAKER_00: I observed teachers and I understood that most of them,
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  SPEAKER_00: they do not just take everything that AI gives them without checking that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or even one of them, it was very interesting.
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  SPEAKER_00: So just before the interview, they asked us, do I need to share students' data?
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  SPEAKER_00: I cannot do that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we need to make sure that, no, you are not going to share any student data.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's about planning a lesson.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate that kind of awareness.
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  SPEAKER_00: The next question that we have is
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  SPEAKER_00: that your NSF-funded research has explored integrating AI
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  SPEAKER_00: into teachers' planning tools.
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  SPEAKER_00: What have you learned about designing AI
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  SPEAKER_00: that genuinely supports teachers' professional judgment rather than replacing it?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_02: What have we learned?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: I should turn this back to Azadeh.
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  SPEAKER_02: No, what have we learned?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: So one thing I think,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: so and I'll talk a little bit maybe about like the overall,
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: like how I got involved in the project because I think this matters.
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  SPEAKER_02: So the tool that this project that we're using in this project was developed
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  SPEAKER_02: before this project,
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  SPEAKER_02: but I got brought on to the project specifically because of my work
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  SPEAKER_02: in mathematics education, but specifically in lesson planning.
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  SPEAKER_02: And so I think what that has meant for me
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  SPEAKER_02: One thing I've learned,
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  SPEAKER_02: I guess,
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  SPEAKER_02: is that you really need to start with a basis for me on lesson planning
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  SPEAKER_02: before you can introduce any sort of AI tools.
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  SPEAKER_02: So the work we're doing with pre-service teachers,
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  SPEAKER_02: when I introduced them to AI,
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  SPEAKER_02: they had already a lot of experience, well, a lot,
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  SPEAKER_02: you know,
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  SPEAKER_02: a semester of experience planning lessons,
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  SPEAKER_02: enacting those lessons, thinking about those ideas.
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  SPEAKER_02: So I think that That's really important.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that sort of structure of introducing an additional tool
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  SPEAKER_02: after they have some experience doing something that's quite important for the rest
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  SPEAKER_02: of their career is something that I think I will continue to use as a structure,
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  SPEAKER_02: I guess, or as a way to introduce pre-service teachers, particularly.
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  SPEAKER_02: And with practicing teachers,
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  SPEAKER_02: I think,
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  SPEAKER_02: and I'll say a little bit why,
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  SPEAKER_02: the practicing teachers,
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  SPEAKER_02: they have experienced planning lessons,
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  SPEAKER_02: and some of them maybe are using AI or not,
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  SPEAKER_02: but even if they haven't,
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  SPEAKER_02: they have some kind of structure of what it means to put together a lesson plan.
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  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that I've learned that that's important because I think you can go to
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  SPEAKER_02: an AI tool,
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  SPEAKER_02: whether it's the tool we've been using in this project or to ChatGPT or any sort
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  SPEAKER_02: of AI tool, And you could just ask it to plan your lesson and it will do it.
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  SPEAKER_02: But if you don't have that framing of what you want a good lesson to look like,
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  SPEAKER_02: it's not, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_02: even if you do go and you like are very critical about what you got,
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  SPEAKER_02: what the output you got,
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  SPEAKER_02: if you don't have a framework for what it is to put together a good lesson plan and
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  SPEAKER_02: to enact that lesson plan, the AI tool is not going to be maybe that useful.
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  SPEAKER_02: So I think that that's something that's really critical.
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  SPEAKER_02: And I also think that we really need to start engaging pre-service teachers with these tools.
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  SPEAKER_02: We can't ignore them.
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  SPEAKER_02: And we're seeing that,
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  SPEAKER_02: you know,
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  SPEAKER_02: when they get into schools,
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  SPEAKER_02: if they haven't thought about these things,
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  SPEAKER_02: they're not using them maybe as intentionally as they could.
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  SPEAKER_02: And that to me is, it's like a real imperative for me as
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  SPEAKER_02: A methods instructor as a teacher educator to help them make those decisions.
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  SPEAKER_02: I think that's what my work has been about,
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  SPEAKER_02: you know,
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  SPEAKER_02: since I started helping teachers interrogate things and make good decisions.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think that what I'm hearing you say is the AI tools are critical,
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  SPEAKER_01: but they cannot be used by total novices
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  SPEAKER_01: because they don't know what they don't know.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
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  SPEAKER_01: So that's one thing I'm hearing.
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  SPEAKER_01: The second thing I'm hearing is that idea that a tool is not going to replace
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  SPEAKER_01: the training,
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  SPEAKER_01: not the training, the education that has to go around it, the coaching.
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  SPEAKER_01: Here are some ways to think about it.
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  SPEAKER_01: So if you take tools and you just give it to people,
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  SPEAKER_01: they're not automatically going to become better teachers just because they have
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  SPEAKER_01: a tool.
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  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right,
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and I guess we could say,
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  SPEAKER_02: like, Yeah, that could happen, but it's probably not going to go so well.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we could just give someone a tool and say, well,
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  SPEAKER_02: you have no teacher ed training,
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  SPEAKER_02: you don't know what it means to do math, and here you go.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Something will happen,
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  SPEAKER_02: but it's probably not going to be as good as it could be if they had some of
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  SPEAKER_02: that thinking through what it means to teach a good math lesson.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going even further.
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  SPEAKER_01: So even if they have experience teaching math,
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  SPEAKER_01: it's not automatic that having a decent tool that was developed will help.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think that there's got to be, I mean,
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: you're talking about the envelope around it that helps people make better decisions
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  SPEAKER_01: and start thinking in specific ways so when they get the feedback or they use
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  SPEAKER_01: the tool, they know what to do with it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's what the,
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  SPEAKER_01: that's my My biggest beef in some ways on the way sometimes these tools,
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  SPEAKER_01: whatever digital tools or even just buying curriculum,
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: it's buying the curriculum isn't going to solve it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: We need to do some work to make sure that people understand how to best use it.
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  SPEAKER_01: And AI is just another example of that.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Totally agree.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I can also see two recurring patterns when I think about our research findings.
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  SPEAKER_00: So, we have done previous research with engineering students,
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  SPEAKER_00: and they said the same thing,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: that without foundational knowledge, you cannot use AI tools effectively.
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  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that you mentioned was about professional development
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  SPEAKER_00: for pre-service teachers,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I've read a lot of studies about teachers and their attitudes toward AI,
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  SPEAKER_00: so many of them have talked about their need to be professionally developed.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I always talk about, yes, that's great.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: But when is that going to actually happen?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because when people are on a break, they want to have a break.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: And when people are working, they are dealing with the here and now.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: So this is the trick.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the part that I think I'm very thankful every time there's an NSF or
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: a different kind of organization that is providing some funds to pay
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: for people's time and to organize all of these things so they happen.
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  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, it's really hard to expect people to do that.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the tool, what is the tool called that you're using?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: So the tool is called Colleague AI.
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  SPEAKER_02: And
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  SPEAKER_02: it was developed through initial funding before this NSF grant.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: But the two NSF grants that I've been a part of,
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: the first one was really to help with developing some of the features
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: of Colleague AI, particularly, if I back up a little bit,
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that we see a proliferation of,
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: and this isn't across disciplines,
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: but in math, you know, stuff on the internet, right?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: And open educational resources, some that might be great, some that maybe not.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the initial ideas for the development
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: of Colleague AI was how can we support teachers
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: in finding open educational resources and knowing whether they're quality or not?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: So that was one of the main first things that Colleague AI was designed for.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I got brought on to kind of think through what does it mean
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: to have quality materials and what might you be looking for?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: So since Azadeh knows the tool a little bit,
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: this is how that review feature got designed and it was Designed by first coming up
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: with a framework for good math instruction and
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: then actually having math education researchers and teachers code lessons.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: And that's actually how that whole review part where Colleague AI will now be able
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: to review a lesson and tell you on certain metrics whether it meets those
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: or doesn't.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: So that was kind of how Colleague AI started.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: And now if you look at Colleague AI, it is Got so much stuff, right?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, now it also has a that it was set up just for kind of teacher planning and teachers use.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now there's an entire side of Colleague AI that's the Colleague AI Classroom.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: So similar to like a Google Classroom or something,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: a learning management system where students and teachers can actually be in there.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: In terms of the things that teachers can do,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: they can review lessons, they can Generate interactives based on lessons.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: They could create podcasts.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: They can do so many different things.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then within the teacher,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: the classroom part of it, students can actually be enrolled in a teacher's class.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: There's AI components of that.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know as much about that.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's newer.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm hoping to,
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: in my new position,
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: work with some schools to kind of think about how are teachers
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: and students using it together.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: But it's really designed to be human-centered.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I know that's one of the things that we talk about a lot.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's a platform that's designed to be a support,
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: not to take away or to replace a teacher,
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: because it's really a teacher tool foremost.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so that's the work that we've been doing recently.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I should say just,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: so this work has been,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: it's not just me and Nebraska and grad students there,
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: but University of Washington, MinSum is actually the PI of the project.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then other collaborators are at Duquesne and University of Maryland,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: where some of the machine learning experts came in.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to make sure I recognize those people.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll attach some of the papers that are attached to it and links just
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: so anybody who's logging in and wants to hear about it and wants
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: to go further will share the resources.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to say thank you for joining us and sharing a little bit.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: We're excited to see the results because I think there's a lot
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: of research that's coming out about AI tools,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: but many of the tools are They're either not well designed
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: or they're just throwing things and seeing what works.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of that has to happen because a lot of people are just,
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of teachers around the world are just getting into ChatGPT and seeing
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: if they can help.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: But it's when you have
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: the thoughtfulness around high quality instructional materials and everything
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: that goes around it,
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: it's really another level of expert use that would probably be...
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Where we would like to see things go for multiple areas of instruction.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you very much.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for inviting me.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: This has been great.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was great to see you both and talk with you.