Creighton University launched an online course this month to help educators start implementing AI in their classrooms, both in their lesson plans and with students.
The course costs $50, which includes the one-hour module and continued access to the course at any time. Robbie Jensen, director of strategic program design and development at Creighton University, said although the course is called “An Educator’s Guide to AI,” it’s for anyone who is interested.
“It’s out there, and it’s not one of those things that we can turn our back on and wait and see what happens,” Jensen said. “AI in education and AI in general is changing at such a rapid pace that we need to keep up.”
The curriculum covers the basics of AI, ethical considerations and how to use AI for educators and students. Jensen said the course covers several tools that teachers can provide students with to enhance their learning, like NotebookLM.
“If they take this AI tool, this NotebookLM, they can upload all those resources,” he said. “Then, they can use those resources to create an audio podcast where they can listen to somebody talk about a summary of all those pieces that they put in there, or they can even create practice test and assessment pieces that they can dive into as well.”
While this tool may be more useful for older students, Jensen said there are ways for elementary teachers to benefit from AI. As a former sixth-grade teacher himself, Jensen said he wanted ways to tailor lesson plans for individual students based on their learning level. Now, there are AI tools that can help with that.
“They have the ability to use AI as a thought partner to find ways to differentiate for some of their learners who are maybe struggling, or those learners who are flying high and you want to keep deepening their understanding as well,” Jensen said. “Those elementary teachers can be using these AI tools to really help them in that scenario.”
Jensen said teachers he has talked with have had mixed reactions to AI, and he hopes this course will help those who are hesitant to use AI.
“I also hope that once they’ve alleviated this fear, that they can jump in and really start to look at how AI can be a time saver for them, how it can really be their ally in the classroom and help them,” Jensen said. “Once you take that fear away, then you can open your eyes to all the different ideas that are out there and really start to see how these AI tools are going to positively impact their classroom.”
As AI continues to develop, Jensen said Creighton will update the course. He also said the university is creating more courses around AI diving into ethics and using the technology in the workforce.
“We want to be a partner in making sure that educators, making sure that the community is staying on top of these technologies that are out there, staying on top of things like AI,” Jensen said. “Courses like this, hopefully, will help to broaden knowledge and deepen their understanding.”
