EP 19 - Michelle Ament talks about AI’s impact on education and the importance of human intelligence in an AI world.

In this episode, John and Jason engage in a discussion with Dr. Michelle Ament about the impact of AI on education, its role in reducing transactional tasks for educators, the significance of human intelligence and soft skills in an AI-driven world, how AI can be leveraged in professional development, and the potential future of AI-integrated, relationship-based classroom environments tailored to individual student needs. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com 

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Links and Resources:

• Dr. Michelle Ament is the Cheif Academic Officer at ProSolve
• Michelle Ament on LinkedIn
• Jason's AI 4 Language Translation Video
• An intro to the Zone of Proximal Development

Transcript

We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions!

False Start

[00:00:00] Michelle Ament: Thank you for having me this morning. I'm so looking forward to this conversation. 

[00:00:04] Jason Johnston: Yeah, and we just wanted to get started just to understand a little bit about you and your background, where you've come from. Currently, you're a chief academic officer. And

John Deletes Jason's Notes

[00:00:14] John Nash: Oh, I did that, didn't I?

[00:00:16] Jason Johnston: John just deleted all my notes.

[00:00:19] John Nash: No, I didn't. I moved my notes and put them below yours.

[00:00:25] Jason Johnston: I'll try again.

[00:00:28] John Nash: Podcasting at its best.

[00:00:31] Michelle Ament: This is fun. 

Start Intro

[00:00:33] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.

[00:00:37] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And this is Online Learning in the Second Half, the Online Learning Podcast.

[00:00:42] John Nash: Yes, we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation that we've been having for the last couple of years about online education. Look, Online learning's had its chance to be great, and a lot of it is, but there's still a bit that isn't. And how are we going to get to the next stage, Jason?

[00:00:58] Jason Johnston: And that's a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?

[00:01:03] John Nash: I love that. Perfect. What do you want to talk about today?

[00:01:06] Jason Johnston: I would love to talk about online learning. How does that sound as a theme, overall theme, for our conversation today? But more specifically, I would love to talk with, we've got a guest with us, Dr. Michelle Ament. Welcome, Michelle.

[00:01:21] Michelle Ament: Good morning.

[00:01:23] Jason Johnston: How are you?

[00:01:24] Michelle Ament: I'm doing great. Thank you for having me this morning. I'm so looking forward to this conversation.

[00:01:30] Jason Johnston: We're really looking forward to having you with us. We just wanted to get started just to understand a little bit about you and your background, you're currently, the chief learning officer you've had a background in personalized learning technology and learning curriculum and design fifth grade teacher, one of my question for you today Michelle is how did you get to where you are today?

[00:01:51] Michelle Ament: Great question. I think about why, where I, how I got to where I am today is I love the design of learning. So when I went into teaching, I was a classroom teacher. I've been in education 25 years. And like you said, I started in fifth grade and was an elementary teacher. And what I loved about teaching first was the daily interaction with kids, of course, but the design of learning.

So it was all about, Yeah. learning, figuring out what learners needed, what were some of their strengths, what were some of their areas of growth, and then figuring out how to design really engaging learning. And so in the classroom, that's what fueled me every day. It was like a problem to solve. How could I design something that was really relevant, highly engaging?

And authentic for kids. And then I went on to lead in that way and led in several different positions, like you mentioned, with technology and learning, with professional development, and a focus on personalized learning. And at that point, it really became what haven't I done?

And the next step was really the superintendency. And I made a conscious decision to, at that point to think is this really where I want to go or do I want to look outside of the public education sector and decided to make the move to ProSolve, found this rapidly growing company who is really focused on learning design and focused on how do we create learning experiences that really are authentic for kids, relevant for kids. And so it fit with my background in design. 

[00:03:27] Jason Johnston: And what do you do on a day to day basis?

[00:03:30] Michelle Ament: What I do on a day to day basis is a whole lot of things. I don't know if either of you have ever worked for a rapidly growing company. When I started with ProSolve, there were eight team members, and now we have 35 over the year about 18 months. So that's rapid growth. I've done everything from design learning to lead customer success to run an amazing shipping department. Oh, there was a skill set I didn't know I had and really serving on our executive team and helping lead the company and and really have an impact on school districts across the country.

And so I'm driven by impact. And I had an impact in my classroom and an impact in my school district, but now I get to have an impact nationwide on a whole lot of school districts and see learning really changing as a result of experiences that teachers are designing.

[00:04:23] Jason Johnston: Great. And you're in ProSolve, just to understand it. It is really an organization that focuses on, is it mostly K 12?

[00:04:33] Michelle Ament: Yes, we are focused K to 12. And what we're really all about is our we believe, and I think this will resonate with both of you, given what I know about your backgrounds. We believe that the education system has been really focused on knowledge dissemination. The educator, the professor, the instructor is just providing information to the learner.

And so what we are really about is shifting that paradigm to more of an experiential based learning. an opportunity to create an experience that learners can reflect on and apply to their day to day world. And we just, we believe school isn't relevant for kids anymore. They, we've seen a decrease in attendance and enrollment, and now with the rise of artificial intelligence, they have all the knowledge at their fingertips, everything that they need to know they can find.

They don't need the traditional classroom. So we believe it's we've got to change. We've got to figure out how to move more towards that experiential application based learning in our classrooms so that students find it relevant. But that's where learning sticks. It becomes sticky when you can apply it to something that's important to you.

[00:05:46] Jason Johnston: Your engagement with school systems is on a, is it on a contract basis? Or do they buy, essentially, curriculum and packages from you to, to use? Or how does your engagement work with school systems and schools?

[00:06:02] Michelle Ament: We have several different options. We do have a curriculum that we offer. We are focused on supporting schools with social emotional learning. And so one of the things with our social emotional learning curriculum is that it is hands on. students have an opportunity to be in a situation where I have to tell you about Quest.

So Quest is this game that is part video game, part board game, part escape room. And so they are immersed in this experience where they all of the adults have vanished This from Sarabella Falls and they have to figure out what has happened to all of the adults and so they work as teams to solve challenges, collect food and collect reputation points and just move through this series of episodes in this experience and all the while doesn't that sound fun?

Don't you two want to play right?

[00:06:57] Jason Johnston: Yeah, for sure. And I was just thinking that's like you're starting with every kid's... Like fantasy that every adult has disappeared and we can just run run this place as we as we wanted to.

[00:07:08] Michelle Ament: And they got to figure out why have the adults vanished, which yes, every child's dream, but also pretty like dystopian type genre, which is what kids are really interested in. And as they work in teams, they compete against each other and they have to collaborate. They have to make decisions together.

They have to compromise. They have to communicate. They have to persevere. So all of those are real world skills, right? And they are developing them in an authentic context. And so that right there is different than any kind of social emotional curriculum in a K 12 market. Typically you are listening to the teacher tell about a scenario and you're Giving them the answers they want to hear and then nothing really changes and now our SEL time is done and we're moving on to math time and then we move on to reading time.

So Quest, that's one of our services that we offer. We have a service learning solution where we help students That's where we leverage design thinking, which I'm really excited to talk to John about design thinking and how we bring that into the classroom. And then we have professional development. How do we make professional development look different?

I'm sure you've all seen that meme where the teachers are falling asleep, falling out of their chairs with a traditional professional development. So we. We do things differently. We engage teachers in a, in fun experiences that really push their thinking and have them reflect on, okay, how do I do more of this in my classroom?

How do I make learning different and more? I keep saying the word relevant on this podcast. You'll probably go back and count relevant and authentic. How many times I say it. But it's true, like, how do we just change what school looks like for for our learner, for today's learners? Those are our solutions, professional development, an SEL curriculum, and a service learning curriculum.

[00:09:07] John Nash: nice. When we were talking a little bit on LinkedIn, we had a little back and forth thinking about. What we might talk about today with you, and you were thinking out loud a little bit about how human centered design and AI might augment or support all of this. 

We see more and more people talking about the power of human intelligence now that AI is in front of us, although we've had this human intelligence. In front of us all this time, but now all of a sudden we're worried about it because AI is here. You were thinking maybe we could think together out loud because you said you hadn't fully formed your ideas on this, but you wanted to dissect the possibilities of how using AI makes us better humans.

What are you thinking about that now?

[00:09:52] Michelle Ament: iT as I think you're right on a couple of points you bring up like we have had human centered learning for forever, right? And we valued the soft skills and the four C's in our classrooms. But I think now that we see that more technical jobs will be taken over by repetitive tasks, I should say will be taken over by AI, our workforce is going to need to leverage those human intelligence skills even more than they ever have before. And so I think when I think about AI in our classrooms, I'm less focused on helping teachers use AI or teach students how to use AI. And I'm more focused on helping them think about how to build human intelligence.

I think it's going to be crucial for our workforce to have really strong employees that are coming out of college and out of high school, knowing having those soft skills and being able to be on a team and being able to think critically and being able to collaborate. And a and I've heard you both talk a lot about ways that you've used chat, g p t and had to really be able to analyze what it was saying, making sure that there wasn't a hallucination present and that's that critical thinking.

And so those are some of my thoughts about AI in education and why the importance of human intelligence. Before I talk about design thinking, I have a question. What. When I say human intelligence to you two, what do you think of? What comes to mind with that word? Cause we've been tossing that around.

Is that the word we want to use to describe this?

[00:11:30] John Nash: That's a great question. I think for me, I'll continue to promote the Brandeis Marshall piece she did in Medium , which is, what's un AIable, which are context, critical thinking, and conflict resolution. These are definite human intelligence skills or properties that AI can't really do well. It can only fake it. 

And then the other thing I heard her say also is that, yeah, AI doesn't know when to shut up. And it will just continue to talk and talk as long as you let it. And so I think that's another thing that, that comes with the context bit is that AI, humans are here to be able to be thoughtful about when to speak, when not to speak, and what makes the most appropriate.

response at any given time to advance resolution towards a challenge or a problem.

[00:12:14] Michelle Ament: Yeah, I hear you talking about self awareness there. It's not really self aware.

[00:12:19] John Nash: said. Yes. Yes. I think so. Yeah.

[00:12:22] Michelle Ament: I love that AI proof skills or so do you like, does so human intelligence resonates with you then?

[00:12:29] John Nash: Yeah. I think we've both been saying it. Yeah. And that, you bring up an interesting point is that as generative AI. Becomes more, I was going to say sophisticated, it's already sophisticated, but I think as generative AI becomes more interwoven into our work lives and our personal lives in more transparent ways, that you're right, that the work skills that we want people to do are going to be more on the human intelligence side. And so people will not necessarily be brought in to do tasks that AI can handle now. So they'll be expected to step up, as it were, a little bit in terms of having the ability to do these other things that we think are more important.

[00:13:12] Michelle Ament: Definitely. And there's some really alarming stats out there that our workforce, when they go to hire, aren't finding employees that have those skills. And so I think while our K 12 system is really focused on college and career ready. I feel like we've been more focused on the college ready, the prepping, prepping our students to go to the the higher ed organs at college or university and be successful academically.

I have a 22 year old who just graduated from university and he is brilliant. He's a double major in mathematics and data science, a triple major in computer science, mathematics, and data science. And he is struggling to, to get out there in the workforce and have those soft skills that are needed even in an industry like that.

And so I'm curious. About you. Prob, I don't know if you wanna talk about how kids that you interact with when they come right outta high school, but I'm just not sure if we're, that we're preparing them for to be college or career ready using those soft skills that we're talking about.

[00:14:19] Jason Johnston: Can I add one thing to on that human intelligence is you mentioned critical thinking. Which is a hard skill. It's a soft skill, right? And, but I like the, this idea of human intelligence and it reminded me another conversation I was having with a very intelligent person, my wife, the other day.

We were talking about, AI in general. And she said , figuring out what is real will be the next big work for our kids and their generation. And I think that is a both a hard skill and a soft skill, right? There's a am I right on this? Is this? This is part of human intelligence is being able to take that higher order thinking of evaluating what is true.

We're looking at some of these image And I just produced a video that I showed her where I spoke in four different languages. I don't know any other languages, and evaluation and critical thinking is a soft skill because it's not focused on, you can do this task, and this task.

It's more focused on an overarching human intelligence that helps you manage and move forward any task. Am I on the right track here?

[00:15:34] Michelle Ament: I think so. Absolutely. I think about. The five paragraph essay is that, educators right now are really concerned about kids using AI to write a typical five paragraph essay or any kind of writing. And I think that we're thinking about it a little bit. incorrectly. I think we need to be not trying to remove students or or I should say, I think, let me start over.

I think instead of trying to figure out how to prevent students from using generative AI with their writing, it's about tasking them to think Critically about their writing. Maybe they all write something. Maybe they write two or three versions of something, and then they have a classmate or in a collaborative setting, they have to analyze which one feels more accurate, which one was written By the student versus by the by generative AI.

I'm this is a very simple idea that I'm bringing forward, but I think the idea here is to think differently about how we design learning that in the face of having these. our students having these tools, what does, how does it look different and feel different? Instead of trying to think about, we want to do the same thing that we've always done and put restrictions in place or prevent kids from using these tools.

I just, I think it, it's about critical thinking, as you mentioned, and how do we design with that being the outcome in the, in how they analyze or critically think about their writing versus producing a level of writing.

[00:17:10] John Nash: Yeah. Can I ask you a question about your work to design experiential curriculum or experiential work with students? How do you gather insights from students and teachers and others to understand their needs and perspectives to build those experiences? And then Maybe we can talk after that.

Actually, I'd just like to stop there with the human intelligence part, but also how maybe AI could help augment that design research process. But I come to you with this question with our overarching mission here, which is to humanize online learning. And when you bring your full suite of thoughts and tools and mindsets to bear on What do you do to gather those insights to make great experiential curriculum?

[00:17:57] Michelle Ament: That's, yeah, that's a great question. I think it really is about getting to know your learners, asking some overarching questions, some essential questions that help them see what's important to them in the process. surveys, whether it is introduction, spending time both in an online environment and in the classroom, really building that community and understanding who they are, what's important to them, what drives them, what are curiosities that they have.

And I think it's less about me as the designer. saying, okay, now you let, you're really curious about this idea, here's the task for you. And you're really curious about this idea, here's the task for you. And instead in the learning design, having it be more overarching or having a universal question that we are aiming for.

And then we're having them connect their interests to that overarching question. And so then it becomes, I think That each learner can do have a path towards learning and understanding. And then the assessment is where you start to have a similar rubric or things that you're looking for in the assessment design is how you start to find the parallels between behind what every learner is researching or learning about.

And then I think even with assessment, there is an opportunity to have some it. differentiation and how learners show you what they know. And so what does that resonate with you in terms of as you build your online communities and start to think about how to personalize learning? And I think You know, how does AI fit into that?

I don't know. It's, there'd be a powerful way to, to have them even begin to use the tool to make connections to that overarching question or that principle.

[00:19:54] John Nash: Yeah, quite possibly. We meet a lot of our peers and other instructors that I meet in the P 12 space who feel like they've been, Sort of their horses that have been brought to water and they don't want to drink in terms of to having to teach on the, you must teach online. Now, certainly the pandemic put a lot of people in a place to do online learning without really feeling like they had the tools or the capabilities or predispositions for it.

And I love what you had to say there about that design. And those are the, that's the mission. When you approach new instructors who want to do well in this space, what are the kinds of practical advice that you give them, or might give them, to say, everything's going to be okay, you're going to do fine, I've suggested that you get to know your learners, now here are three things you could do that are low threshold, sort of high impact things that might get you going, to give you the confidence to do well.

[00:20:48] Michelle Ament: I think first it would be giving those learners a suite of different tools that they might use. I think of Flipgrid as a video type tool. Maybe maybe it's as simple as make a slide deck that says you're going to show some images or some videos about three things, three, three overarching questions.

Who are you? What's important to you? Where do you want to go with your life? I'm just really spit balling right now. But it could be something like that. And I earned my doctorate in an online education for Capella, completely online. And that was a fascinating experience to be in a really thought cerebral space and still trying to develop community.

And I think we could have spent more time in that space building community. And then as we continued to go through the process, , then we have relationships and relationships drive learning. And so we could have even supported each other even more.

So I think it's, simple video introductions. It could be a slide deck introduction. I think it's moving past the narrative when we see. See each other is when when it's most impactful. It could even be pulling people together in community forums like this and just having time and space to share a little bit about ourselves, share about things we're passionate about, questions we have, and just building those connections with one another.

Because I think then once you start to have a re we're all relational and that's what. drives human capacity is that relationship having empathy for one another. And so creating situations where that empathy comes out, I think can go a long way than in learning,

[00:22:28] John Nash: Really nice. I think that's a great point that the relationships drive learning because I've fallen into this trap and I think my colleagues do too is that I have so much to cover. I don't have time to do community building and I found that when I've taken the time to do it, it's paid off. In a big way on the other side where students become peer support for each other where we have a mission together, not as this divide between teacher and students, but we're trying to get somewhere together.

I think then the learning becomes so much more powerful and easier to also carry out.

[00:23:03] Michelle Ament: right, it becomes personal to both to everyone in the group or in the class. And I think once you start to do that it, you can deepen learning so much more quickly when it becomes, people are, it becomes personal, you become invested in both your own learning, but your peers your colleagues learning as well.

[00:23:22] Jason Johnston: I've got a question. So a couple weeks ago John and I talked with Dr Kristen DeCirbo, who's the chief learning officer at Khan Academy. And they're conceiving of this AI chat bot that would be there for students, whether, first in K 12 and then in higher ed and how that student would always or that.

Conmigo would always be there for that student to help them along anytime they have trouble move them forward when teachers can't be okay. So thinking about that, thinking about how we're trying to build human intelligence, and then this idea which I absolutely agree with that it's relationships that drive learning.

What is it about relationships that you think really drive learning? You touched on a couple things, but what is it about relationships that you think drive learning within an online context that a AI bot would not do?

[00:24:20] Michelle Ament: I was. When you were asking the question, one of the things I was thinking a lot about first, and then maybe I'll get to the online piece what I think, but I went into education, I told you both this, I went into teaching because I love kids, and I, there is an art of teaching, there's an art of being an educator.

being relational, having, I have a deep sense of empathy for others. And I think that is part of why I was able to personalize learning and really understand the strengths and the areas of growth and what matters to that individual. And I call that the art of teaching. And I think we have seen our school system be so much more focused on the science of teaching.

I believe strongly in standards alignment and I believe strongly in assessing what students should know and be able to do, but I feel like along the way our educators have lost that ability to show up with what they're really good at and that is the art of teaching. Understanding their students, having that sense of empathy.

I think if you asked most educators, they would say They went into teaching because they love learning. They love students. And so I think that is an area that we need to really focus on bringing back that art of teaching. And I'd be curious in your online form, if you would agree that there has been a little bit of that loss of art of teaching in higher ed and more of a focus on the science of teaching.

And what I'm seeing you nod. And would you agree?

[00:25:52] John Nash: if I may,

[00:25:53] Jason Johnston: Yes.

[00:25:54] John Nash: no, if I may, perhaps I might even call it the art of teaching versus the transaction of teaching. I think I see us move. I would love more science of teaching actually in light of all the sort of transactional teaching I see going on, particularly in the online space and vendors don't help all the time in that way either.

They've sold us packages that make us think that the teaching is a transactional act. I've got more on that, but I wanted to just add that. I think

[00:26:23] Michelle Ament: I really, I do really like that because I think even in, in in the pre K 12 system there, it does become more transactional. And I think you mentioned, we just. Bring students to what we need them to know, and then we move on to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing, because we've got to cover everything and check off all the things.

And I haven't, I actually, to be honest, haven't looked at Khan Academy's new tool. I've heard amazing things about it, and It feels though, all of a sudden in this conversation that could help solve some of that transaction, some of that place where learners could go there for information and then learners come to the instructor to, to really be in that relationship, be able to share ideas in a way that, and get feedback from the instructor and be in that relational setting.

And what I think drives. Why learning is relational is because it becomes a part of who we are, like the times when I have internalized learning is because it mattered to me and it impacted me in a really here we go, relevant and authentic way. It was something that was important to me. And so I can think about times where just.

being in conversation with someone has deepened that learning far more than reading an article or watching or reading a text on it. Now that helps me build my background, so then I can be in a conversation with someone. But there's that piece of being able to push each other's thinking and be in that cognitive dissonance.

And that, doesn't come just because two humans are talking. It comes because of trust, because I believe you have good intentions in helping me by pushing my thinking or disagreeing with something I'm saying. And so I think as online educators, if you had the time and space to really build that trust, to be in those places, to talk about ideas, to push thinking, that could go a long way and having a more technical tool

to support that transactional teaching. It, there's the possibilities are endless when I think about that.

[00:28:27] Jason Johnston: I love that idea of trust, I think that could be one of our distinctions, a distinctive factor. I think there are a lot of things that these AI tickerbots can do. Khan Academy does not have any intention. They, Intentionally do not want these tutor bots to be a student's best friend or for them to have real relationship with these tutor bots.

They intentionally move them over into this helpful, empathetic AI, but without this kind of, they don't think it'd be healthy for students to form attachments to these tutor bots, right? And I think attachments come through trust and I also think trust becomes a bit of a tether for students, especially those that are.

That are struggling to help them, to help pull them forward in this journey of education. What do you think about that idea?

[00:29:19] Michelle Ament: Yes, I think that having those AI bots to be able to take the load off some of the instructors work, the transactional work, and then be able to really foster that trust. And again, that's intentionality there, you have to be thinking about how do I, because trust is a two way street, how do you get the, your learner to trust you, but also how do you trust the learner too?

And I think that I think teachers right now, there's like this, the sentiment out there with AI, and it doesn't promote trust. It is about cheating. It's about using it in inappropriate ways. And so I think we're onto something. We've got to be thinking about how do we, what's the opportunity here? So that we can, as educators, build more relationships, have more trust, bring back that art of teaching, and not be adversarial to what AI is bringing into our classrooms.

And I'm saying very broad, brushstroke language here because I know there are a lot of educators, a lot of school systems that are embracing the use of the technology, but I, it's so new, we're just at the beginning of how is this going to change teaching and learning? And I think there's opportunity to focus the conversation on what are the opportunities that it will give educators in this ability to build human intelligence, to build relationships.

To do what they've gone into education for, which is supporting the learning of their students in a relational way.

[00:30:53] John Nash: I love the focus on trying to help improve professional development. We run a lot of dissertations through our department where students are looking at how to improve that, because it seems like it's a perennial problem that will never go away.

When you stakeholder buy in and how key that is for any education initiative, How do you think AI might help model and predict the impact of a professional development initiative and build support for a change in a school?

[00:31:32] Michelle Ament: I haven't thought about that yet, so this is fresh thinking. I think anytime we can build some background is a strong thing, is a good thing. I'm also thinking about As those leading initiatives in a school system, how do they really understand change management and how could the AI tool like if you were to put in I'd be fascinating, it would be fascinating to put into your, chat GPT.

What is the initiative? What is the problem you're solving? And then what steps would it tell you that you maybe need to consider? What pitfalls might it help you anticipate? I would be really curious what it would tell you about because that then could help you in the planning, the design. I think my experience with professional development and change is that school districts They, they dive right into the next initiative.

We're going to plan this great PD day and they're not really thinking about the long game. So what is the next three to five years look like change doesn't happen overnight. And so I think that's part of the pitfall there. and what we will do a couple of professional development sessions and then we're like, geez, nothing's changing.

They're not implementing it with fidelity. There, things aren't really happening. It must be that. Let's go to this solution now. Let's move to this this initiative. And I think implementation science tells us that it takes three to five years for change to happen. And there has to be really intentional change management steps.

And so for me, I wonder how the AI tool could help you in predicting what pitfalls you might have and what change management principles you might put in place. I also wonder about just in the design, how it could prompt and give you ideas to begin to work from. I know I've used, the AI tool in that way to get me started, it's when we work from a blank sheet of paper, sometimes that can be challenging using a tool to help us brainstorm, get ideas, might, might help, and especially if you prompt it to, to say, I want an immersive experience, I want something that is innovative, I want something, you give it some, you prompt it with some parameters, it might at least get you and your team started with the design.

So those are, what do you think about? Are any of those resonating with you?

[00:33:53] John Nash: Yeah, those are resonating with me. And I could see the tool, some of the things you mentioned at the start of that, which were ideas around giving designers, it could be even instructors in online programs. It could be designers of PD programs, the questions they should be asking. I think that the tool is very useful for brainstorming questions, if you give it the parameters around the kind of audience and some of the perceived risks that you see with what might happen with the initiative. You can get a good set of questions to ask your stakeholders, but prior to doing anything, I think it's also good for doing, you alluded to it, but it sounded like almost doing a pre-mortem.

It's here's what we're gonna do and here's where we want to be. Now, what could go wrong here? And that could be fed back into a loop of asking questions and even doing scenario thinking with people before anything even starts and how likely do you think this is to happen? And how much do you think we have the bandwidth or the initiative to carry out these things?

That can even tell you more about where the tailoring of the PD should be and things like that.

[00:34:59] Jason Johnston: Yeah. And I think when you're talking about change management in the school as well, that predicting, as you said, John and Michelle, both kind of predicting where some of those pain points are going to be is a, it could help us. Yeah, it could help us think about some possible. Negative scenarios that would happen when we're so often, I think, optimistic about our change initiatives, right?

We're optimistic about, oh yeah, this is the perfect plan. It's just going to move forward and so on. And I, and maybe AI would help break through a little bit of that optimism in a good way to help us be predictive, as you said, and be thinking about that. That's great.

[00:35:36] Michelle Ament: John, one of the things you, I think you, we started to go down this path and I'd be curious to talk a little bit about how you think AI would fit with the human centered design thinking, because that, when we think about that, it is it, we don't want to lose the human centered nature of it.

That is what makes design thinking marvelous. But have you thought at all about in, in leading people through design thinking where you might leverage the AI tools?

[00:36:06] John Nash: I have been thinking about this and I think, Okay. There are a couple of places where I see it being pretty useful, and there are several places where I advise not using it at all. Let's start with where you wouldn't want to use it, and I almost alluded to it in the comments before about professional development.

It's alluring for new users of the large language models to think that they can interview it. As a user and you shouldn't do that in my book. I don't believe that's that should ever be done because AI is not human. And so 

it's gonna give a very authentic sounding response that seems like it's. It's you talking to the people that you want to serve and it's not. And so I think that's the place where you really shouldn't use it. I don't believe it should be used for initial brainstorming on challenges either. I think that's best left to humans.

I think that in a true sort of air quotes here, we're on audio, but I have my fingers in

the where you might do some empathetic need finding, and then you define the problem. And then you brainstorm on that problem and then select some things from that. It's this synthesis of all that data from all those interviews and the observations you do that I think should be done by humans, but then can be augmented by AI.

So then let's talk about where AI could be useful in design thinking. I think it can be useful in making sense of a whole series of interviews. And looking at some themes and getting some themes up after the human design team has really thought also what they think that, so we can affirm those.

I think in a in a brainstorm, I think it's really good for extending the brainstorm. So after a group has sat down and really thought through all the ideas to solve a challenge then I think you could feed those into the model and then get some extensions. I think it serves a pretty interesting...

Role in potential prototype ideas. And and I'm in favor of people having really wild ideas to get to the tame, useful ideas. And so you can prompt the model to say here are some things that we're thinking about doing. Here's the solution. How could we, how could this show itself? I think it's also good for, we do a lot of storyboarding for prototyping and we use Pixar's story spine technique to tell a story of a user going through a problem and having a challenge.

And then the solution that's been developed by the students comes into play and then their life becomes better. And I was just working with a colleague last week in their class on using the AI model to generate these quick stories of like how, what would be some scenarios that might happen when people are experiencing a solution created through design thinking.

So that was a bit of a list, but those are my thoughts at this moment.

[00:38:51] Michelle Ament: I, something that I was thinking about was during the empathize stage, definitely not using AI because yes, you would feel like it's empathizing with users, but it isn't the users you're serving. It isn't the users you're designing for. And I don't even like to say that word user. Because it feels impersonal, then, I've used design thinking a lot in my classroom and in the school district and then now with ProSolve, and it is about listening to those you're serving and hearing what it is their needs are.

And AI would make it seem like you were, but you're not even talking to the people that you are designing for. And so I think that is for sure. I really liked where you were going with the prototyping, because I think, and I think again, starting with the human and then augmenting like how do we take this and see how do we make our prototype even better.

So here's all the things we've thought of. What haven't we thought of? What are ways that we might improve this? Could go a long way. I think you could, sometimes it's hard for people to come up with , empathy questions at the initial stage. So my mind also went to, we were interviewing students.

We want to understand about their school experience. What questions might we ask? And it might generate five really great questions and then even prompted a second time of we really want to understand how they're feeling like if all the questions come back very very basic to the maybe more technical, then you could prompt it and get some of those more deeper questions about getting a sense of how people are feeling about something, for example.

So those are things that come to mind there.

[00:40:32] John Nash: I work with a lot of, I'll call them novice designers, but they're sometimes they're teachers in our graduate class, sometimes they're undergraduates in the class, but they've not gone through a sort of a creative thinking process to creatively solve a an ambiguous challenge. And so when they get into the brainstorming stage or even at the the prototyping stage where they're thinking about how they might manifest their solutions, they'll run out of steam and we, my, we like them to live with the problem and think through the problem.

But I'm seeing AI as a way to help them reinvigorate their thinking after they run out of steam because they're not accustomed to their brains thinking in these sorts of ways. I've also thought about it as as an adaptive tutor. And I stole an idea from Ethan Mollick, who was talking about deliberative practice and using ChatGPT to become a tutor.

And I think it can be helpful in teaching students how to use open ended questions for empathetic interviews and give feedback on the quality of their follow up questions in a mock interview to get them accustomed to doing that. Without that, we usually will just have students we'll teach them the empathetic interview process and we'll give them a protocol and they'll go out and do it.

But their first interviews really are just practice and they're not as strong as they could be. And I haven't tested this empirically, but I'm wondering if we did the practice first, if those first interviews might be stronger and they might get better data from those if they had an opportunity to practice first with ai.

[00:41:58] Michelle Ament: I like that. I like where you're going with that because it starts to, there's two things. I do know that fatigue, I will, when leading design thinking, I'll say, okay, you've gotten all your ideas now do one more. And they look at me like, I don't have one more. And so that might be a way to just spark some of that creativity again and save time design thinking can be something that goes over a course, of weeks or or several class periods, for example, and sometimes we don't have that. And so I like that idea of practicing the interview with the chat might be a way to just build some capacity before they go in front of the people they're designing for.

[00:42:39] Jason Johnston: And one thing I said there, Michelle, remind me of something you've said before, John, which is using it to try to get through roadblocks. So you don't maybe use it before you hit that roadblock. So I've got four ideas and I can't come up with any more. Maybe chat can help generate a few more ideas, if you've really worked through that and that's good.

AS we're rolling things up here, we're wondering what you think about a future with ai. Our guess is that this is not going away. Online learning is not going away. We're gonna see more online learning, we're gonna see more ai. It's probably going to be more, uh, work side by side with AI and or ai even taking the place of some of the things that we traditionally do as teachers, as educators. What do you think the world is going to look like 10 years from now? What are some of the things that maybe excite you about that world? What are the things that perhaps concern you about that world?

[00:43:39] Michelle Ament: I Think there are a lot of things that excite me, probably more than concern me. I think about, I think that our AI tools can become really great teacher assistants. How do we, I don't believe that, I don't believe it's going to replace any educators, the system at large. I think, how do we start to try different things now as educators?

Maybe we're not even using them in the classroom. Maybe we're just personally trying things out, seeing what we learn. I think, because I agree with you, it's not going anywhere, and I believe our classrooms will become more where AI becomes an assistant, becomes a place where we can create efficiencies, but also be able to use it as a learning design, to be able to say, here's what I want to teach, here are a couple of different, things my learners are interested in, what are different ways to design the learning so that it is relevant.

And I just, I go back to what we've already talked about. It's going to free up a teacher to go back to why we all went into education, to have that art of teaching, to build those relationships. Building that human intelligence in the classroom. So that's where I think the focus really it is opportunistic.

I think if we approach it that way with a really positive mindset and also be aware of the cautions, the things we have to think about. A huge thing that I know that our school systems have to think about is just data privacy and the amount of information that that could be, that is potentially harmful for children.

I'm not naive in that there aren't. anything, any cautions or things we need to be thinking about, but I'm trying to stay more of that glass half full mentality, like what are the opportunities and how do we envision a classroom where the, where what students are learning is really tailored to their needs?

It's exactly at their zone of proximal development. It's very relevant to them and it has an opportunity to be applied to their day to day life and the real world and through, and teachers having the opportunity to build those relationships and foster that human intelligence. What do you two envision your classrooms to look like in 10 years?

[00:46:01] John Nash: I'm so glad you took the question because I tend to avoid answering that because my answer lately is after what we've seen in the last nine, 10 months I can't tell you what the next six months will look like. But my hopes are that it is it's something that feels a little bit seamless, but still to Jason's point earlier about his conversation with his wife is that we're still able to really know what's real, what's artificial and what's human, but as it doesn't feel as I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for?

RiGht now we have to decide to go and have a chat, right? You know, It's not text based, it's not going to be image based. Somehow it's all going to be integrated in some seamless way, and I think that will be interesting to see how that plays out.

[00:46:44] Jason Johnston: my my answer is how about we do a podcast and talk about it, which is really kind of a veiled uh, like, yeah, I think, I think there's so much more in the conversation to, to to talk about. But yeah, I think those are great answers. I wish, you know, we talked about how this is not a video podcast, which it won't be, but I kind of wish it was a video podcast in part because I try not to interrupt, but I'm nodding a lot. So people can picture me nodding a lot when Michelle and John are talking because there's so many good ideas here. This is a great conversation. We're going to put links in our show notes for ProSolve and so people can get in contact with Michelle and her team if they wish to do that.

As well as yeah, as well as we should have a transcript there and any other resources that we can connect you with, as well as please join us on our LinkedIn group, our our podcast is at onlinelearningpodcast. com, our LinkedIn group, if you look that up as well on LinkedIn, you should be able to find our group and feel free to send messages to John or myself or probably Michelle.

Do you take messages on LinkedIn every once in a while, Michelle?

[00:47:51] Michelle Ament: Absolutely. I love talking with people on LinkedIn. There's so many great ideas. And it goes back to a theme of this entire conversation is learning is relational. And so if I can build a relationship with people, I that's where the heart of learning happens. So certainly reach out to me and let's have some conversations.

[00:48:11] Jason Johnston: That's right, that's good. Again, lots of head nods.

[00:48:14] John Nash: Yes, lots of head nods.

[00:48:16] Jason Johnston: this is why we're doing it and learn lots from you today, Michelle. Thank you. And as always, , learning lots from you, John. So thank you for this great conversation.

[00:48:24] John Nash: thank you both

[00:48:25] Michelle Ament: Thank you.