Today I finally took the plunge and asked Design 11 students to use Gemini AI to help them with a classroom task. I had visions of them using Gemini as a “bicycle for their minds”, as Steve Jobs would say, but it didn’t work out quite like that. At best I would say it was a good start to a very complex conversation.

The Context

We have just finished learning about the Ergonomics and how it can be used to make products more efficient, usable, functional and safe. I wanted my students to dig deeper into these concepts so provided them with THIS VIDEO by the makers of the M+D Crutch and THIS ARTICLE with more information about their design process. Their task was to work in pairs to fill in the graphic organiser  below with information on how the M+D Crutch was designed to be efficient, usable, functional and safe?

My goal was for them to really dig into this challenge and be able to describe specific aspects of the design that met these different ergonomic needs, and not answer the questions at a surface level. So I thought AI could help. Before starting I showed them how AI could:

• Summarise a video or article for them
• Tell them more about specific parts of the summary that they think are relevant
• Be a thinking partner (at least that is what I thought I was showing)

The Results

Once they got started I wandered around and chatted with each group about how they were using AI to help. Some observations:

• Many groups were reluctant to start using AI or were not sure how to start prompting
• A number of groups asked Gemini a general prompt, like how did the designers design for efficiency and then were madly trying to copy down the answers on their papers. This actually led to probably the most powerful learning of the lesson because it was an opening to discussing the difference between plagiarism (blindly copying the AI answers) and thinking (using AI to delve deeper into a topic in order to really understand it).
• After stopping them a number of times and talking about ways Gemini could be a useful thinking partner I was pleased with the way most of them started to use AI to help them puzzle through answers, but in many cases I still felt that they still did not get how powerful this tool could be if they use it to “understand” rather than just “get the answer”.
• When I asked them at the end of the class for feedback on the process not many of them said they really liked using AI in the investigation. Some found it frustrating because it kept giving them the same answers, which makes me think they were just asking it the same question in different ways.

I finished the lesson by having each student respond to the question in Google Classroom so I could see how much they each understood, and to be fair I think the quality of their answers is better than if they had not used AI to help them, but I am left thinking that a LOT of careful thought needs to go into using AI in the classroom. It has so much potential to be a thinking partner, but this takes effort and in an environment where students feel they are just there to get the answer the temptation to use AI to make their lives easier is easy to understand.