This winter, Mathematics Education Professor Irina Lyublinskaya taught “AI Literacy for Educators: A Curriculum for 21st Century Teaching” alongside CMLTD alum Dr. Xiaoxue Du (EdD., 2022). The course equipped participants from a variety of professional backgrounds with essential knowledge and skills in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It was taught as a part of the inaugural TC Academy, which offers educational and corporate development programs that leverage TC’s world-renowned faculty and thought leadership.
The course included five modules based on A14K12.org’s Five Big Ideas in Artificial Intelligence: Perception, Representation & Reasoning, Learning, Natural Interaction, and Societal Impact. It integrated design thinking, or the process that designers use to create solutions by prioritizing end user needs, to prepare students to contribute meaningfully to their professional fields through the decisions they make about the use of AI. Classes included lectures as well as exploratory activities, which provided participants with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience and experiment with AI tools.
Professor Lyublinskaya said the course’s biggest success was seeing the participants’ excitement when they found tools that would be professionally or personally useful for them. She describes seeing the light bulbs go off in participants' heads: “I loved seeing the real ‘Aha!’ moments when they saw something that they knew would be valuable for their professional jobs or for their personal learning.”
The course was also able to dispel a number of negative assumptions folks have about AI. Ideas about students only using these tools to cheat, that AI will compromise student privacy, and that AI will always be biased because the data it’s trained on was created by humans who have biases. While these are definitely valid concerns, there are ways to address these risks, and Professor Lyublinskaya also sees a lot of potential use for AI within education. She believes AI can be extremely useful for personalizing learning experiences for students; these tools can adapt to individual students’ learning styles and needs in ways that support the lessons teachers develop in class. As teachers are not available 24/7, she also sees AI as a potential after school tutor. It can also help teachers to develop more culturally relevant content that scaffolds on students’ existing knowledge. Beyond these, Professor Lyublinskaya believes there are potential uses for AI tools that we have yet to discover.
Whether educators decide to use AI in their classrooms or not, this “AI Literacy for Educators” course helped participants to learn how AI works, what its potential uses are, and the risks and benefits of integrating these tools into the classroom. Professor Lyublinskaya emphasizes the importance of understanding these tools and making educated decisions about if/how to use them in our professional and personal lives.
In this vein, Professor Lyublinskaya and her co-instructor, Dr. Xioaxue Du have a forthcoming book titled Teaching AI Literacy Across the Curriculum: A K-12 Handbook. The book will be released by Corwin Press in July 2025! To be notified when the book is available for pre-order you can fill out this interest form. Many of us in the MST department look forward to reading the book and continuing to develop our AI literacy with Professor Lyublinskaya’s expertise to guide us!