{"id":765164,"date":"2026-06-28T05:48:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T05:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765164\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T05:48:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T05:48:29","slug":"ai-in-schools-concerns-that-students-struggle-to-learn-without-generative-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765164\/","title":{"rendered":"AI in schools: Concerns that students struggle to learn without generative technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JacksonSave<\/p>\n

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n

Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n

AAA<\/p>\n

The use of artificial intelligence by high school students is now so widespread that many pupils can\u2019t imagine learning<\/a> without it, new research has found.<\/p>\n

Professor of Education Miriam Tanti leads a team at La Trobe University that has undertaken several studies this year surveying secondary school students across two states about their use of AI in their studies.<\/p>\n

\"HaileyburyHaileybury deputy principal of teaching and learning Anna Sever and year 11 student Oliver Schreurs.Simon Schluter<\/p>\n

The research found that many students report they \u201creally struggle to imagine learning without AI\u201d, while others admitted they now never study for exams without it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe risk isn\u2019t necessarily plagiarism or cheating, the risk is that illusion of understanding,\u201d Tanti told this masthead. \u201cThey think they know a topic because they put it in a chatbot, but they\u2019ve bypassed the effortful process of thinking that makes learning stick. That\u2019s the real challenge ahead of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tanti and her colleagues will release a teaching guide next month that emphasises students\u2019 need for explicit instruction \u2013 teachers modelling tasks step by step \u2013 to show students how they should be engaging with AI for learning.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Barker<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re saying is that learning happens through specific cognitive processes, by managing attention, retrieving knowledge. So gen AI is useful when it protects those cognitive processes and protects that effort,\u201d Tanti said.<\/p>\n

St Leonard\u2019s College Brighton is one of the many schools experimenting heavily with several teachers at the bayside school having trained AI chatbots to provide feedback to students outside class time. Teachers then closely monitor the feedback.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a mini teacher,\u201d year 10 student Isabelle Skewes said of a bot developed for her economics class. \u201c[My teacher] programmed it to sometimes even mark work with assistance, and give feedback she would give. It\u2019s basically generated to talk like her and speak like her. I ask it for a lot of feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is plenty of discussion about responsible use of technology at the school, too.<\/p>\n

From year 8, students learn about the biases, hallucinations and overconfidence<\/a> inherent to many chatbots to ensure they\u2019re critical of AI output.<\/p>\n

\"StSt Leonard\u2019s College director of innovation Charles Neave, with Year 8 Lewis Goddard and Year 10 Isabelle Skewes.Simon Schulter<\/p>\n

Isabelle, for example, wrote a history essay on the role of the sea in Viking and Polynesian civilisations, with the starting point of asking AI for help. The AI response was useful, she said, but the answer was too general and included many stereotypes. She then built on the response herself and was marked on her own additions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe teacher turns it back on them and says, \u2018Right, OK, it\u2019s given you this answer, so what else can you do to try and verify that answer? What else can you do to criticise this answer?\u2019\u201d St Leonard\u2019s director of digital innovation, Charles Neave, said.<\/p>\n

How students write an AI prompt is another area that teachers are testing students on. \u201cWe\u2019re showing them that they should actually get extensive answers that look at a lot of different aspects of the question,\u201d Neave said. Some educators are thinking about tasks that grade students on the pathways they sent chatbots down and the counter-prompts they corrected course with.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Australia\u2019s<\/a><\/p>\n

However, uptake of the rapidly developing technology in schools has experts worried that students relying on AI are bypassing the cognitive benefits of traditional learning, as the fightback against its dominance gets under way.<\/p>\n

The Victorian Education Department is taking a cautious approach. It doesn\u2019t prescribe a single platform for schools, but is monitoring platforms as it prepares to publish guidance later this year that will address emerging risks such as over-reliance in student learning.<\/p>\n

John Paul College in Frankston was among the early adopters of using chatbots in class in 2023; the technology has now changed the expectations of academic integrity for assignments done without supervision.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve said to our teachers, the minute you allow a student to do any work, either unsupervised in your room or you\u2019ve asked them to do the work at home, you have to assume AI is being used,\u201d said deputy principal Michael O\u2019Keeffe.<\/p>\n

Generative AI \u2013 which students may use to create \u201coriginal\u201d content such as essays, images or reports \u2013 is also forcing educators to think carefully about protecting the process of learning, with some schools doubling down on the use of pen and paper.<\/p>\n

\"YearYear 11 Haileybury student Oliver Schreurs.Simon Schluter<\/p>\n

Haileybury uses a traffic light system for the tasks that students use AI for \u2013 a green light for an artwork might mean it can be entirely designed using AI, for example, or an essay marked yellow limits it only for brainstorming. This year, students returned to using pen and paper for most middle school exams, partly due to the risk of them using AI to generate answers during an assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a bit more bulletproof when you\u2019ve just got pen and paper,\u201d said the school\u2019s deputy principal of teaching and learning, Anna Sever.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why we are so focused on foundational skills. We want our students to be creative, we don\u2019t want them to offload at those critical junctures with their learning, and we don\u2019t want them to underestimate the value of hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oliver Schreurs, a year 11 student at Haileybury, said he used AI by giving it the marking rubric for assessments and asking it for feedback on his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI can give us feedback on that and tell us how to restructure things or improve our work, and I think using it like that as a tool is good, while still keeping your work as your own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, even his computer science classes now have more supervised handwritten assessments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI personally still believe in pen and paper,\u201d Schreurs said. \u201cNot just to ensure the work is original, but I also think ideas can be expressed in the most original and creative way on paper, and it helps drill ideas and theories into minds instead of just typing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Start the day with a summary of the day\u2019s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Save<\/p>\n

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n

Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n

\"JacksonJackson Graham<\/a> is an education reporter at The Age. He was previously an explainer reporter.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-765164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}