Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators

Artificial intelligence is starting to come across as a new challenge in math education. However, if you think about it, is this actually something new, or is it something the field has already seen before? The concerns around AI feel very similar to what people said when calculators were first introduced into classrooms, which makes this shift seem more familiar than it might appear at first. When calculators were first brought into schools, many educators were worried that students would rely on them too much and stop learning the basics. Over time, though, calculators became normal and are now seen as helpful tools instead of problems. AI seems to be heading in a similar direction. Even though it is more advanced, it is still just a tool that can either help students learn or hurt their understanding depending on how it is used. In math, AI can actually be useful. It can help with computations, walk through steps, and give quick feedback when students are stuck. That can make math m...

  In many of my more traditional math classes in the past, I have received feedback on my homework way too late. I would do all the homework problems on paper, turn them in, and then a few days later receive feedback. However, I often made the same mistake on every problem because I had no way of knowing I was doing it wrong. This means incorrect habits were being reinforced. Using technology in our classrooms can help eliminate this problem by providing students with instant feedback, helping to stop them from reinforcing incorrect habits. There are many different ways to offer instant feedback to students. One is using tools like Kahoot or Quizziz at the end of a class. You can make two or three problems, and the students can solve them after the lesson. These not only provide feedback to the students, but also to the teachers. It offers statistics saying which answers students got wrong, what they put instead, what percentage of the class got it right, and more. This means tha...

With a surge of AI on the rise, it has raised a lot of concern for the classroom. Though math teachers have dealt with AI tools that can solve math for some time, they have not dealt with AI tools that can create detailed work to pair with it too. This causes fundamental learning gaps in a person's education as they bypass the learning that comes from making mistakes and experiencing failure. So what exactly have we done to try to negate the negative effects while utilizing the greatest multitool made to date? Some educators have taken the stance of outright abolishing the use of AI for their course, others have tried to integrate some more restrictive usages, and a few even say "run wild" in hopes that learning will still be induced by failure to yield the same results as a learner previously did without using AI, compared to using AI. Though these three scenarios do not cover the entirety of what has been attempted, they cover a large portion of approaches. The issue wi...