Teaching in the Age of the Shortcut

My first week back in the classroom after a year off to be with my newborn was eye-opening. I was taken aback by how much had changed in a high school class in just one year. Students moved through written assignments faster than I had remembered. The answers were often correct but lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. Students withdrew from the discussion and attempted to take pictures instead of writing notes when instructed. It didn't take long to notice that the environment I had known had shifted. Many students had begun to rely on artificial intelligence to support their workload.

While humans have often sought shortcuts for difficult tasks, our contemporary ones are more advanced and responsive than ever, and educational systems were unprepared for their emergence. As a result, schools are now reevaluating foundational questions such as what constitutes knowledge. What defines authorship? What does genuine effort entail?

Some advocate for a return to technology-free classrooms, arguing that without devices, artificial intelligence becomes irrelevant. While this approach may feel safe and familiar to many educators, it is not realistic. Students inhabit a technologically saturated world, both now and in their future workplaces. Temporary breaks from technology are possible, but complete avoidance is not feasible in the slightest.

I see my role as an educator as fostering knowledge growth and supporting authentic cognitive engagement. When AI is integrated into students’ lives, educators must guide them in using it as a tool for deeper thinking rather than as a means of bypassing intellectual effort.

With a focus on student productivity and technology integration, integration has historically often amounted to substituting one tool for another. Students typed their assignments instead of writing by hand, or submitted their work online rather than on paper. While the tools evolved, the underlying cognitive processes remained unchanged. The advent of artificial intelligence has made this issue increasingly difficult to ignore and perhaps more than merely a matter of substitution, as studies show a decline in brain activity when AI is used lazily and regularly. For example, if a student uses AI to summarize a chapter instead of writing their own, the real thinking isn’t happening in the student anymore. We’ll call this Phase 1 of AI use.

I have seen Phase 1 of AI usage by high school students on a regular basis. The conclusion of what I believe to have been a thoughtful, engaging lesson around rhetorical appeals in social media was followed by an equally thoughtful and engaging student task that involved creativity, research, and content knowledge application. The task (summarized): Find an authentic example of persuasion from social media, ads, or commercials and analyze how ethos, pathos, and logos are used and who the target audience is. Then create your own version that strengthens one appeal and explain your choices. A strong percentage of students simply and seemingly copied and pasted the assignment task and submitted the results as their own work. There are far too many examples of this effortless practice at play in recent times.

At a more advanced level of AI use than substitution, a student might employ AI to generate multiple thesis statements, compare ideas, search for sources, or identify potential counterarguments. In this scenario, the student remains cognitively engaged and uses the tool to explore the process more rapidly. We’ll call this Phase 2 of AI use.

Phase 2 was added with intention to the next iteration of my rhetorical appeals lesson. A shift in instructions was meant for students who “elected” to use AI as a thinking partner rather than an answer board. I applied specific instructions that allowed students to choose from 3-5 different analyses of an assigned ad and then required them to undergo a decision-making process that forced an evaluation of the provided AI results by judging quality, comparing ideas, and refining thinking. This was done through a series of short-answer questions, peer interviews, and discussions. The results were clear. A visible increase in understanding was evident, particularly with the former Phase 1 users.  

In Phase 3, the goal for student integration of AI is for students to begin investigating the tool itself. They may seek potential biases, question inaccuracies, or analyze how their prompts influence responses. This shift from just obtaining answers to understanding the reasoning behind them fosters empowerment. I did not implement Phase 3 into my rhetorical appeals lesson to avoid the change in aim from “analyzing persuasion in social media, ads, and commercials” to “analyzing how well AI understands persuasion;” though there is merit in a lesson around this on its own. Students very well could identify weak reasoning, inaccuracies, and bias in AI.

Classrooms often remain in Phase 1, using AI for substitution. Meaningful progress occurs in Phase 2, where students do the thinking and use AI to refine ideas, and can eventually shift towards Phase 3. Intentional lesson design is necessary for this progression.

Authorship is diminished as soon as a student submits an AI-generated response as their own. However, if a student documents the prompt, evaluates the AI output, revises their argument accordingly, and reflects on the interaction, the assignment may be fundamentally transformed. In this scenario, it is not the technology that becomes more powerful, but rather the quality of thinking that is enhanced.

Technology rarely saves poor instructional design, if ever. But in learning environments that prioritize reasoning, revision, and reflection, AI serves a different function: it acts as a stress test. While the tool itself remains neutral, the instructional design may determine its impact. In the example of my rhetorical appeals lesson, reflection was included in each iteration. It was here where I was able to identify students' needs and abilities, and phase the use of AI to encourage students to go deeper.

Reflection must also be part of our classroom.  Students should be able to explain: what they asked, why they asked it, what the AI produced, where it was strong, where it was flawed, and how thinking shifted. Without this layer, AI may become a shortcut; though with it, a cognitive partner. (Click here to access Jon’s AI Reflection Form via Google Forms to make a copy).

Education is adapting to a shifting landscape while attempting to preserve what truly matters: reasoning, judgment, and growth. If we avoid engaging with AI entirely, students will still use it quietly and unexamined. If we overcelebrate AI, we risk lowering the bar and confusing efficiency with growth.

The middle path is harder. As educators, we should always be designing tasks that make thinking visible. We should ask students to explain how they've used AI. We should clarify what we actually value: reasoning, synthesis, judgment, and intellectual stamina.

Resources:

• https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/
• https://spencereducation.com/a-continuum-for-using-ai-in-schools/
• https://taylorinstitute.ucalgary.ca/resources/SAMR-TPACK

This post is part of our Shifts in Practice series, which features educator voices from GOA’s network and seeks to share practical strategies that create shifts in educator practice. Are you an educator interested in submitting an article for potential publication on our Insights blog? If so, please read Contribute Your Voice to Share Shifts in Practice and follow the directions. We look forward to featuring your voice, insights, and ideas.