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  • 1.  IMPACTful Discussions: Using AI as a Math Instructor: What's Working for You?

    Posted 15 days ago

    AI can generate problems, scaffold explanations, and even provide feedback-but how are math instructors actually using it? Some leverage AI to streamline grading or create personalized learning experiences, while others are still figuring out its role in their classrooms.

    Let's discuss!

    • Have you used AI to enhance your teaching? If so, how?

    • What AI tools have been most effective (or least effective) for you?

    • How do you ensure AI supports student learning rather than replacing it?

    Share your experiences below!



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    Rob Eby
    professor
    Blinn College - RELLIS Campus
    Bryan TX
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  • 2.  RE: IMPACTful Discussions: Using AI as a Math Instructor: What's Working for You?

    Posted 14 days ago
    Edited by Fred Feldon 14 days ago

    Hi, Rob  --  In my online Liberal Arts Math class the Homework has Help features such as View An Example and Help Me Solve This. Every 3-4 assignments or so, there is a Quiz. They are the exact same questions as the Homework (with the numbers changed of course) but no Help features. Soooo many students do fine on the Homework but bomb the Quizzes. Of course, those students typically over-rely on the Help features so I always lay out a helpful strategy to combat this, somewhere in the course website. Do they read that? Unknown. But one day in class, during a live synchronous Zoom meeting, I opened up ChatGPT. Live, right in front of the students, I typed in a prompt for help on improving Quiz scores explaining the questions come exactly from the Homework but with no Help features. Wow, what an amazing result! It came up with steps for students that were so helpful! And students, I hope, learned a use for AI to succeed in a math class--that is NOT typing in problems to get an answer, right? How cool was that?  --  Fred



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    Fred Feldon
    Coastline CC
    Fountain Valley CA
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: IMPACTful Discussions: Using AI as a Math Instructor: What's Working for You?

    Posted 7 days ago

    In my Math for the Liberal Arts class I have students I believe are using AI to DO the homework for them.  My class uses projects/presentations in lieu of exams, but they do have MyOpenMath homework with each section.  As part of their final project, they'll have three MyOpenMath questions where if they copy/paste directly into AI, they'll get the wrong answers.  Three of my colleagues were guinea pig students and took the 3-question assessment using AI only.  All three used a different AI and scored 6 out of 30.  This is the first time I've taught this class in a decade so I'm investigating what my students are doing so I can make appropriate changes in the fall when I teach the course again.  If I "catch" the students using AI to do their actual thinking, that will be something to reflect on moving forward.  



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    Michael Miller
    Math Instructor
    Aims CC
    Greeley CO
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: IMPACTful Discussions: Using AI as a Math Instructor: What's Working for You?

    Posted 13 days ago

    Hi Rob,

    Thank you for bringing up this topic.  It is highly relevant.  While I don't have a full answer bullet wise to your question, I can tell you how I've used it.  And where I failed at using this tool initially.

    I first tried using ChatGPT a year ago, and more recently, treating it like I would a Google search in terms of the prompts I gave it.  That attempt to use the tool failed miserably (I was able to break it in several ways) and mentioned to my colleague who uses AI as part of her teaching that tool didn't work for me.  So she asked me to show what I was doing and identified the way I was using the tool was the reason it it was failing for me.

    I actually needed to interact with it and provide context.  And then tell it when it was giving a wrong result.  That was interesting.  So I re-conceptualized how I would interact with this tool.

    My sense of interacting with it now is like an intern new to the job that needs a lot of guidance.  It can be useful but needs lots of context.  While one might do it faster yourself, I also understand that with training, an intern can actually become good/productive at their job.  As I provide input into what it is doing right versus what it is doing wrong, the model itself improves with the feedback.

    Case in point for the curious reading this thread.  I was thinking about ideas to generate for applications for solving trigonometric equations.

    Its results had a few that were novel suggestions I hadn't considered.  But I also knew about Snell's Law  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law)  which the ChatGPT didn't mention.  So I pushed the AI to generate an example with Snell's Law.  The ChatGPT came so close!  You can be the judge.

    Public link of this chat below:

    https://chatgpt.com/share/6817a2d7-fcd0-8010-a99a-c7f17477af20

    Unfortunately, with the free ChatGPT version there is a daily limit it seems.  And maybe my institution will pay for an account without restrictions (finding this out currently).  Beyond ChatGPT, another plausible AIs are Claude and Bard/Gemini that I plan to explore.

    But I think the strength of AI is in idea generation, as the model it uses is based on scouring whatever is publicly available on the internet and then synthesizing the findings into the context of a conversation.  With image generation, AI still has kinks that need to worked out (in my opinion) but with some prodding, it does improve in what it generates.

    So I think as I grow in my understanding how to use AI to help in my teaching, I can also help and guide my students learn to use these AI tools available in ways we as a math community view as ethical and reasonable.  They will use it irregardless of how we feel about it and I would rather prefer know how it works.

    Because in my opinion any technology tool we use is not good or evil in itself, it is how we choose to use it and how we guide others in its appropriate usage that will make the difference from a pedagogical and ethics perspective.

    -Frank



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    Frank Marfai, Ph.D.
    Phoenix College
    MARICOPA COMMUNITY COLLEGES
    Mathematics Faculty | Mathematics
    Past President | Arizona Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges
    Chair, Research in Mathematics Education for Two-Year Colleges ANet
    1202 W. Thomas Road, Phoenix, AZ 85013
    frank.marfai@phoenixcollege.edu
    https://www.phoenixcollege.edu/
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: IMPACTful Discussions: Using AI as a Math Instructor: What's Working for You?

    Posted 13 days ago

    • Have you used AI to enhance your teaching? If so, how?

    I mostly use AI to enhance my asynchronous courses, especially providing content through our LMS. Looks like I can't embed an iframe in myAMATYC (RIP), so here's a link to an example from my discrete mathematics course: https://studio.libretexts.org/h5p/26619 

    I use it to help me quickly generate accessible tables and LaTeX when I need them. I'll also occasionally use it to reformat pages in the Transparent Assignment Template - letting it help fill in missing components so that online assignments are clearer to students. 

    • What AI tools have been most effective (or least effective) for you?

    Mostly using ChatGPT just because I have workspaces for each course and project. But I do love NotebookLM for the fact that it doesn't just generate words probabilistically and will stick with provided content. The podcast feature is also amazing for giving students another way to interact with content beyond text and video (neither of which could be accessed during a drive or while caring for a child). Here's one of the last ones created for my stats class based on the text provided: Inference on Regression Podcast. Straight up uncanny valley stuff, but so useful for so many students.

    • How do you ensure AI supports student learning rather than replacing it?

    Whelp, this is a hard ask. I try to keep my classes focused on student creativity and curiosity, hopefully showing them that those things matter. While also taking time to explain to them that while AI can shortcut tasks, it requires diligent fact-checking, which is much easier from an expert viewpoint. So using it to shortcut the learning is doing them a disservice in so many ways... I'm currently optimistic, but I just had a semester without an online class. I'll be back to a bitter hater after my summer stats course. πŸ˜…



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    Kelly Spoon
    Associate Professor
    San Diego Mesa College
    San Diego CA
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    Original Message


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