Educators weigh benefits and challenges of AI in the classroom – #Catholic – Educators are weighing the benefits and drawbacks of artificial intelligence (AI) and exploring how to successfully integrate the technology into the classroom.As Pope Leo XIV laid out in Magnifica Humanitas, AI must be used in a way that furthers human development, especially in the formational years of education.Educators are using AI tools to help them grade papers and offer extensive research capabilities, but they are simultaneously noting the need for community and connections that no technology can provide.Fernanda Psihas, a professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, said the technology tools have not replaced human instructors and human connection is still the key to success in the classroom.Concerned about the ethical use of AI, Psihas said it is necessary to preserve the “human element” to enhance the future of education.“We obviously need to prepare the students for a world with AI,” she told EWTN News. “That means learning tools, but that also means practicing proper discernment.”The data science and physics professor said it would be “dangerous” for teachers to keep teaching as if nothing had changed.“If instructors are not AI-literate, then classrooms are going to run the risk of drifting into having students faking competence and avoiding the actual learning,” she said.Taking a “values-first approach” to AI, Psihas said she tries to keep herself and her students accountable when it comes to its use.“Use it to increase efficiency so you can focus on the learning, but if you do any more than that, youʼre actually destroying the learning process,” she said.Protecting academic integrityAware that “cognitive offloading” to AI tools could disrupt the learning process of students, Psihas said certain AI tools can be useful to protect academic integrity.“I even use AI to AI-proof my own assignments,” she said. “Iʼll run my assignments through AI to see an example of an AI response … if something in my classroom is AI-generated, my students know about it, and I kind of expect the same for my students.”While AI helps Psihas accurately grade multiple-choice tests and produce datasets, she said it cannot replace her ability to engage with students through mentorship.“Education is a lot more than just skills and information-transfer, but itʼs actually the formation of the whole person,” she said. “There’s guidance. You guide and nurture the students’ curiosity and their skills.”It “is about turning knowledge into wisdom and turning skills into virtue and character,” she said.Similarly, Notre Dame Law School professor and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences member Paolo Carozza said we must ensure technology “is orienting us towards the fundamental understanding of reality, including the reality of ourselves and what weʼre made for or not,” Carozza told EWTN News.Pope Leo makes this clear in Magnifica Humanitas, that at the root it is “an integrated problem of cooperating with one another to rebuild our city that we want to live in, in the future together.”Education “plays a central role in this cooperative enterprise because weʼre forming the individuals that are then going to be putting the bricks together in the future,” he said.Advantages and disadvantages are ‘well mapped’AI’s “advantages and disadvantages are pretty well mapped,” Carozza said. AI can “positively enhance the reach of peopleʼs research and the knowledge that they can draw.”In contrast, “every educator, at every level, is seeing the really potentially drastic negative consequences of cognitive offloading and de-skilling of students' basic capacities to write and to think critically.”The “deeper challenge” for educators is “providing our students with a fundamental human formation that allows them to really think about what their personal relationship to technology is in their lives and how it affects it.”The positive and negative impacts of AI in education also differ based on age and must be addressed accordingly, said An Chih Cheng, professor at DePaul Universityʼs College of Education.“The pope warned about the danger of early exposure to digital technology,” Cheng told EWTN News.Children spending time watching screens “is not particularly conducive” for their “mental and cognitive development.”A lot of screen time for children “is passive learning” and is “devoid of social aspects that are critical for communal development,” he said.“Communality is a critical part of the pope’s idea that we are not by ourselves” and “we are all interconnected as one,” he said. Going “to the screen and being isolated” is “harmful for your own internality, your own individual growth, and also bad for communal development.”There are also risks of “digital harm” for teenagers, especially with social media use, which has “caused harm to individual teenagers in particular, even suicide,” Cheng said.Then in higher education, new technologies are often being used with “little guidance.”“For example, California [State University] signed a $13 million contract with Open AI to allow students and teachers to use ChatGPT,” he said. “But … if you just have the chatbot open there, it is absolutely not helpful for meaningful learning.”The universities are “kind of just buying these tools, convinced or led by the tech industry, thinking that they could deliver some kind of learning.”“But learning, as the pope has always said, is an inquiry, a truth-seeking endeavor that requires patience. You cannot just have an immediate answer like the prompt that gives an immediate answer,” he said.“You need to put in all the effort to seek out the truth. Thatʼs how we mentally develop — acquiring the truth.”Reimagining education in the age of AITo help students understand both the risks and benefits of AI, Carozza and Cheng are incorporating AI into their students' studies.In his seminar on law and technology, Carozza had his students take a new approach when studying their weekly scholarly works.“In addition to reading it directly and engaging in their own critical analysis of it, I actually required them to upload those papers into an AI tool and use the tool to analyze it,” he said.Then “they had to write … an essay comparing their analysis to the AI analysis, reflecting on what the use of AI was doing to their own cognitive abilities and processes.”This allowed the students “to reflect every week” and ask: “Is this displacing my ability to think? Is it helping it? How can I make it more the latter than the former?”“It was great because by the end of the semester they really had thought very deeply, in a continuous way, about their relationship to technology, what the appropriate limits were for themselves, and what to be cautious about,” he said.“That sort of reflection on who we are as knowing subjects, as free people — thatʼs exactly what the encyclical is asking us to do,” Carozza said.Cheng is also incorporating the technology into studies in his research method class where “AI can be used to help brainstorm some research questions,” he said.“More importantly,” AI “can help make things more accessible, because some of the statistical software is very expensive to purchase,” he aid. “I incorporate … statistical analysis that they can do at home. These tools are much [more] affordable than the super-expensive commercial software."Cheng also utilizes visual AI simulations so students “can see these virtually enriched environments,” which is “beneficial for preservice teachers [student teachers] to understand child development."The pope’s call is correct, that it is “not about using AI to replace teachers or professors but rather to incorporate AI in a way that can further human development and in a way that delivers … spiritual attainment,” Cheng said.

Educators are weighing the benefits and drawbacks of artificial intelligence (AI) and exploring how to successfully integrate the technology into the classroom.

As Pope Leo XIV laid out in Magnifica Humanitas, AI must be used in a way that furthers human development, especially in the formational years of education.

Educators are using AI tools to help them grade papers and offer extensive research capabilities, but they are simultaneously noting the need for community and connections that no technology can provide.

Fernanda Psihas, a professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, said the technology tools have not replaced human instructors and human connection is still the key to success in the classroom.

Concerned about the ethical use of AI, Psihas said it is necessary to preserve the “human element” to enhance the future of education.

“We obviously need to prepare the students for a world with AI,” she told EWTN News. “That means learning tools, but that also means practicing proper discernment.”

The data science and physics professor said it would be “dangerous” for teachers to keep teaching as if nothing had changed.

“If instructors are not AI-literate, then classrooms are going to run the risk of drifting into having students faking competence and avoiding the actual learning,” she said.

Taking a “values-first approach” to AI, Psihas said she tries to keep herself and her students accountable when it comes to its use.

“Use it to increase efficiency so you can focus on the learning, but if you do any more than that, youʼre actually destroying the learning process,” she said.

Protecting academic integrity

Aware that “cognitive offloading” to AI tools could disrupt the learning process of students, Psihas said certain AI tools can be useful to protect academic integrity.

“I even use AI to AI-proof my own assignments,” she said. “Iʼll run my assignments through AI to see an example of an AI response … if something in my classroom is AI-generated, my students know about it, and I kind of expect the same for my students.”

While AI helps Psihas accurately grade multiple-choice tests and produce datasets, she said it cannot replace her ability to engage with students through mentorship.

“Education is a lot more than just skills and information-transfer, but itʼs actually the formation of the whole person,” she said. “There’s guidance. You guide and nurture the students’ curiosity and their skills.”

It “is about turning knowledge into wisdom and turning skills into virtue and character,” she said.

Similarly, Notre Dame Law School professor and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences member Paolo Carozza said we must ensure technology “is orienting us towards the fundamental understanding of reality, including the reality of ourselves and what weʼre made for or not,” Carozza told EWTN News.

Pope Leo makes this clear in Magnifica Humanitas, that at the root it is “an integrated problem of cooperating with one another to rebuild our city that we want to live in, in the future together.”

Education “plays a central role in this cooperative enterprise because weʼre forming the individuals that are then going to be putting the bricks together in the future,” he said.

Advantages and disadvantages are ‘well mapped’

AI’s “advantages and disadvantages are pretty well mapped,” Carozza said. AI can “positively enhance the reach of peopleʼs research and the knowledge that they can draw.”

In contrast, “every educator, at every level, is seeing the really potentially drastic negative consequences of cognitive offloading and de-skilling of students' basic capacities to write and to think critically.”

The “deeper challenge” for educators is “providing our students with a fundamental human formation that allows them to really think about what their personal relationship to technology is in their lives and how it affects it.”

The positive and negative impacts of AI in education also differ based on age and must be addressed accordingly, said An Chih Cheng, professor at DePaul Universityʼs College of Education.

“The pope warned about the danger of early exposure to digital technology,” Cheng told EWTN News.

Children spending time watching screens “is not particularly conducive” for their “mental and cognitive development.”

A lot of screen time for children “is passive learning” and is “devoid of social aspects that are critical for communal development,” he said.

“Communality is a critical part of the pope’s idea that we are not by ourselves” and “we are all interconnected as one,” he said.

Going “to the screen and being isolated” is “harmful for your own internality, your own individual growth, and also bad for communal development.”

There are also risks of “digital harm” for teenagers, especially with social media use, which has “caused harm to individual teenagers in particular, even suicide,” Cheng said.

Then in higher education, new technologies are often being used with “little guidance.”

“For example, California [State University] signed a $13 million contract with Open AI to allow students and teachers to use ChatGPT,” he said. “But … if you just have the chatbot open there, it is absolutely not helpful for meaningful learning.”

The universities are “kind of just buying these tools, convinced or led by the tech industry, thinking that they could deliver some kind of learning.”

“But learning, as the pope has always said, is an inquiry, a truth-seeking endeavor that requires patience. You cannot just have an immediate answer like the prompt that gives an immediate answer,” he said.

“You need to put in all the effort to seek out the truth. Thatʼs how we mentally develop — acquiring the truth.”

Reimagining education in the age of AI

To help students understand both the risks and benefits of AI, Carozza and Cheng are incorporating AI into their students' studies.

In his seminar on law and technology, Carozza had his students take a new approach when studying their weekly scholarly works.

“In addition to reading it directly and engaging in their own critical analysis of it, I actually required them to upload those papers into an AI tool and use the tool to analyze it,” he said.

Then “they had to write … an essay comparing their analysis to the AI analysis, reflecting on what the use of AI was doing to their own cognitive abilities and processes.”

This allowed the students “to reflect every week” and ask: “Is this displacing my ability to think? Is it helping it? How can I make it more the latter than the former?”

“It was great because by the end of the semester they really had thought very deeply, in a continuous way, about their relationship to technology, what the appropriate limits were for themselves, and what to be cautious about,” he said.

“That sort of reflection on who we are as knowing subjects, as free people — thatʼs exactly what the encyclical is asking us to do,” Carozza said.

Cheng is also incorporating the technology into studies in his research method class where “AI can be used to help brainstorm some research questions,” he said.

“More importantly,” AI “can help make things more accessible, because some of the statistical software is very expensive to purchase,” he aid. “I incorporate … statistical analysis that they can do at home. These tools are much [more] affordable than the super-expensive commercial software."

Cheng also utilizes visual AI simulations so students “can see these virtually enriched environments,” which is “beneficial for preservice teachers [student teachers] to understand child development."

The pope’s call is correct, that it is “not about using AI to replace teachers or professors but rather to incorporate AI in a way that can further human development and in a way that delivers … spiritual attainment,” Cheng said.

Educators weigh benefits and challenges of AI in the classroom – #Catholic –

Educators are weighing the benefits and drawbacks of artificial intelligence (AI) and exploring how to successfully integrate the technology into the classroom.

As Pope Leo XIV laid out in Magnifica Humanitas, AI must be used in a way that furthers human development, especially in the formational years of education.

Educators are using AI tools to help them grade papers and offer extensive research capabilities, but they are simultaneously noting the need for community and connections that no technology can provide.

Fernanda Psihas, a professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, said the technology tools have not replaced human instructors and human connection is still the key to success in the classroom.

Concerned about the ethical use of AI, Psihas said it is necessary to preserve the “human element” to enhance the future of education.

“We obviously need to prepare the students for a world with AI,” she told EWTN News. “That means learning tools, but that also means practicing proper discernment.”

The data science and physics professor said it would be “dangerous” for teachers to keep teaching as if nothing had changed.

“If instructors are not AI-literate, then classrooms are going to run the risk of drifting into having students faking competence and avoiding the actual learning,” she said.

Taking a “values-first approach” to AI, Psihas said she tries to keep herself and her students accountable when it comes to its use.

“Use it to increase efficiency so you can focus on the learning, but if you do any more than that, youʼre actually destroying the learning process,” she said.

Protecting academic integrity

Aware that “cognitive offloading” to AI tools could disrupt the learning process of students, Psihas said certain AI tools can be useful to protect academic integrity.

“I even use AI to AI-proof my own assignments,” she said. “Iʼll run my assignments through AI to see an example of an AI response … if something in my classroom is AI-generated, my students know about it, and I kind of expect the same for my students.”

While AI helps Psihas accurately grade multiple-choice tests and produce datasets, she said it cannot replace her ability to engage with students through mentorship.

“Education is a lot more than just skills and information-transfer, but itʼs actually the formation of the whole person,” she said. “There’s guidance. You guide and nurture the students’ curiosity and their skills.”

It “is about turning knowledge into wisdom and turning skills into virtue and character,” she said.

Similarly, Notre Dame Law School professor and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences member Paolo Carozza said we must ensure technology “is orienting us towards the fundamental understanding of reality, including the reality of ourselves and what weʼre made for or not,” Carozza told EWTN News.

Pope Leo makes this clear in Magnifica Humanitas, that at the root it is “an integrated problem of cooperating with one another to rebuild our city that we want to live in, in the future together.”

Education “plays a central role in this cooperative enterprise because weʼre forming the individuals that are then going to be putting the bricks together in the future,” he said.

Advantages and disadvantages are ‘well mapped’

AI’s “advantages and disadvantages are pretty well mapped,” Carozza said. AI can “positively enhance the reach of peopleʼs research and the knowledge that they can draw.”

In contrast, “every educator, at every level, is seeing the really potentially drastic negative consequences of cognitive offloading and de-skilling of students' basic capacities to write and to think critically.”

The “deeper challenge” for educators is “providing our students with a fundamental human formation that allows them to really think about what their personal relationship to technology is in their lives and how it affects it.”

The positive and negative impacts of AI in education also differ based on age and must be addressed accordingly, said An Chih Cheng, professor at DePaul Universityʼs College of Education.

“The pope warned about the danger of early exposure to digital technology,” Cheng told EWTN News.

Children spending time watching screens “is not particularly conducive” for their “mental and cognitive development.”

A lot of screen time for children “is passive learning” and is “devoid of social aspects that are critical for communal development,” he said.

“Communality is a critical part of the pope’s idea that we are not by ourselves” and “we are all interconnected as one,” he said.

Going “to the screen and being isolated” is “harmful for your own internality, your own individual growth, and also bad for communal development.”

There are also risks of “digital harm” for teenagers, especially with social media use, which has “caused harm to individual teenagers in particular, even suicide,” Cheng said.

Then in higher education, new technologies are often being used with “little guidance.”

“For example, California [State University] signed a $13 million contract with Open AI to allow students and teachers to use ChatGPT,” he said. “But … if you just have the chatbot open there, it is absolutely not helpful for meaningful learning.”

The universities are “kind of just buying these tools, convinced or led by the tech industry, thinking that they could deliver some kind of learning.”

“But learning, as the pope has always said, is an inquiry, a truth-seeking endeavor that requires patience. You cannot just have an immediate answer like the prompt that gives an immediate answer,” he said.

“You need to put in all the effort to seek out the truth. Thatʼs how we mentally develop — acquiring the truth.”

Reimagining education in the age of AI

To help students understand both the risks and benefits of AI, Carozza and Cheng are incorporating AI into their students' studies.

In his seminar on law and technology, Carozza had his students take a new approach when studying their weekly scholarly works.

“In addition to reading it directly and engaging in their own critical analysis of it, I actually required them to upload those papers into an AI tool and use the tool to analyze it,” he said.

Then “they had to write … an essay comparing their analysis to the AI analysis, reflecting on what the use of AI was doing to their own cognitive abilities and processes.”

This allowed the students “to reflect every week” and ask: “Is this displacing my ability to think? Is it helping it? How can I make it more the latter than the former?”

“It was great because by the end of the semester they really had thought very deeply, in a continuous way, about their relationship to technology, what the appropriate limits were for themselves, and what to be cautious about,” he said.

“That sort of reflection on who we are as knowing subjects, as free people — thatʼs exactly what the encyclical is asking us to do,” Carozza said.

Cheng is also incorporating the technology into studies in his research method class where “AI can be used to help brainstorm some research questions,” he said.

“More importantly,” AI “can help make things more accessible, because some of the statistical software is very expensive to purchase,” he aid. “I incorporate … statistical analysis that they can do at home. These tools are much [more] affordable than the super-expensive commercial software."

Cheng also utilizes visual AI simulations so students “can see these virtually enriched environments,” which is “beneficial for preservice teachers [student teachers] to understand child development."

The pope’s call is correct, that it is “not about using AI to replace teachers or professors but rather to incorporate AI in a way that can further human development and in a way that delivers … spiritual attainment,” Cheng said.

Magnifica Humanitas offers educators guidelines and tools on how to approach AI while prioritizing human dignity.