Welcome to AI. Now what do we do about homework?

There’s no doubt in my mind that artificial intelligence is a godsend for teachers. If you’ve taken the time to learn a bit about how it works, which is nothing magical, its limitations, errors, and biases, as well as the ethics of its use, you already have a solid foundation for using it critically and effectively. If, on top of that, you’ve spent a few hours interacting with it and have training in pedagogy and curriculum design (which, if you’re a teacher, you should have), it becomes a fantastic tool to help you (yes, I said help you, not do the work for you) set learning objectives, define assessment criteria, and plan activities. It will also be very useful for creating resources, scaffolding, and assessment tools, as well as for making adaptations for students with diverse characteristics or functional diversity.

But when we talk about students’ use of it, things change. There’s a lot that could be said, but in this article I’d like to focus on just one specific point: homework.

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Reducing grades is the consequence

For some time now, when I do trainings, I have been meeting teachers who want to reduce the grades in their subjects, but don’t really know how to do it. Since we opened the No Grades group on Facebook (not yet part of the group? There are already over 400 of us!), I get even more enquiries from teachers who are concerned about the over-reliance of students on grades.

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There is life beyond the analytical rubric

Analytical rubrics have been in vogue for a few years now. You talk to teachers at all levels and many of them use analytical rubrics. And it seems that by using these rubrics they are already doing formative and formative evaluation.

My experience, however, tells me quite the opposite. I am not as radical as a good friend of mine who says that the rubrics are obsolete, but she has a point. Continue reading “There is life beyond the analytical rubric”

Qualifying activities vs. qualifying objectives

There is something that doesn’t fit at all and that is very common among teachers: the way in which final grades are calculated (quarter, project or course grades). Let’s suppose that we programme competently. Based on some competencies, we set some objectives (course, term, unit or project). To achieve these objectives, we design activities that the students will have to carry out. Some are more guided, others more open (within the objectives to be achieved). In the classroom, we carry out actions so that the students know the objectives and make them their own. While developing the activities, we make formative assessments: we give clear criteria to evaluate (self-evaluation, co-evaluation and heteroevaluation), we give feedback… From this feedback the students improve the tasks. In addition, they periodically review the objectives initially set to see if they are getting closer and make decisions about them.
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