An exploratory and iterative approach to gen AI use as a tutor

Itziar: My name is Itziar San Sebastian Sauto, and I'm a tutor here at the University of Wollongong. I teach Spanish. I've been using gen AI in my teaching in different ways. One of them is just to save some time to me to create differentiating approaches in the classroom. We really have a quite diverse background of students in Spanish.

One of the samples to acknowledge that differentiation in the classroom is, for example, with the Generative AI can very easily access to a list of vocabulary, for example, with cognates that they are words that sound similar in both languages. In this case could be English and Punjabi or English in Korean, English in Italian. Some of them are obvious, some of them are quite difficult and there are none of them. But again, I can show the students that I am already acknowledging his background.

For example, when someone I see that is struggling to, for example, with the comprehension reading of any text. I don't have the time to just go and paraphrase all the text for being accessible for him or for her or for them. I just ask them to paraphrase the full text in a lower level. Lower in the sense that it's still natural and it's something that is not, that it still makes sense inside the course. But it's a little bit lower. So we just scaffold that student into getting to whatever we are aiming for him or for them to do at the end of the course.

What inspires me the most to use gen AI is just the students. I feel that we really trust that we are here for them, and the student should be the center of our teaching. I cannot reach to every single one of them. I don't have something else to help me, and plus, the day has 24 hours and I have a life as well. So I find sometimes that is the mainstream of teaching let's always some other students out, and I was just trying to get them back in.

Itziar: I think that deciding what is the best tool of gen AI to use for my content is the biggest challenge. Because there are so many options out there. We are like experts in our content and all of a sudden we are getting somewhere else that we really don't find ourselves being experts. So I think it's a little bit scary. What I did is just first is just look online. It's just look for the most common tools being used for foreign language teaching and go with it.

A lot of things that I wanted to do in my class is to bring real things, not to create documents for the students to learn the language. Bring things that they are right now at their age group. Things that they are appealing to them. I'm not going to put them Pocoyo or any kind of I don't know Sesame Street. They are 18, 19, 20, 24 years old students. So we need to bring them something that is really they talk to them. So I think in this case is that again I don't think that is about generative artificial intelligence. It's again about being a teacher. Also because of the specific of our subject is foreign language teaching. It's very specific. I'm not saying that the rest of the subject I'm not saying it's specific like we are different and special, but it's different because it's not only the content we are teaching them to how to communicate.

So out of the communication and human communication using generative AI and how to bring that thing together. So I think that in the process of choosing the tools, in the process of why this one and not the other one, I still need to have some feedback from my students and that's what I what I'm trying to do is get the feedback from students and try to see if this is working or not. Give us a little bit of a let's make some decisions around what happened last semester and now let's bring them together. And I think that we will be really true to ourselves saying can we have them as a that we are working together. It's a collaborative tool. We can do it together. It's not that I give you this, I teach you how to use it and then you use it. I think that's too much. It's like we are putting ourselves in a hierarchy that we are here the students are there and it shouldn't. If they are there with us we are learning teaching and doing the whole process together and I think that that's what we will be aiming for.

Itziar: I was very lucky to have a coordinator that was willing to accept my ideas, and I really feel very fortunate about it. Her name is Dr. Catherine Seaton, and she is the coordinator for Spanish 242. The main challenge with the course content was that I found it very challenging to engage the students because they were coming from different backgrounds. So I suggested to Catherine that maybe we could adjust the subject outline slightly, and she was willing to try it.

The feedback that we received from the students was really the best that we could get. That feedback was like a sign that I was about to give up, and now I think that I can do it. I believe that at some point it's not just about them making it no matter what. The reason might be that they need extra help. So, we shouldn't be scared of changing things because we are not just changing; we are making it better and providing more options.

We were teaching them how to communicate because communication is language. If you know this, you will be able to create a class where everyone is engaged and feels included. We couldn't have done it if we didn't take those tools because it would have taken us forever to create their content. We were also very aware that we were saving time, not just to go for our coffees, but totally the opposite—to keep going and see what we could do.

We are willing to repeat what we did in Spanish 242 again in the spring semester and use what we learned from it. We want to use it again if it works, and mostly to have the students' feedback as a way to confirm that it is indeed working. This is significant, and the students really appreciate when they see that you are just a bit aware—that you see them and even if you are saying "I see you, I cannot help you right now," but still, you see them.

So it's not just that you are there. I think that's wrong. The generative AI tool can help me do that because it saves me some time to do that little research and instead bring something that I can offer. One of the challenges of using generative AI is that it's never completely reliable; the things that you are getting may not be reliable. And the way that we can maybe check the text that we were giving them, I will give it to the tool that is attached to it. We know the text that is producing is at a lower level of a language that we are experts or have expertise in. It's very easy for us to control the product that the generative AI is giving us. I am kind of cautious, and the things that I ask, if I'm going to bring something to the classroom, I will trust that my expertise in the language is enough to say okay because I will never ask things that are beyond my expertise.

Itziar: If I need, if I will be willing to give advice, first of all, I'm not that expert. So at first I am the first, I am the example that you can use it. If I can use it, everyone can use it because I don't know anything about it.

So I think that is just go for it. At the same time, don't go for it. I think that is the fun part, that is not scary. You use it if you want to, you then use it if you don't want to. But it's not like we will not, or it's banned from your tutorial. Just give it a try and if you don't feel comfortable, just check with your peers. So just and again, use it and if you realise that you are not getting the results that you were hoping for, don't keep using it.

There are certain things that we, oh, at the end of a tutorial or at the end of a lecture, you say like, oh my goodness, this one will be better if... But I don't have the time because I go back to my own research, I go back to my own life. Maybe you have the time to say, I'm going to trust first step on getting some ideas from a generative AI and then you will see if you don't do it or not. It's just having, I think that it gives us more options. I think that to have options is always good.

I think the communication of the use of gen AI with the students, again, is the challenging part because from one side, it's kind of like we feel a little ashamed that we are using it. We really need to communicate why we are doing it. So, we said, OK, this is the reason why you are able to read this text because we run a tool that is generative AI.

So I think that at some point, if we are true to ourselves, the artificial intelligence, the generative artificial intelligence is just letting us know that we create very intelligent questions and we know and we are willing to try. It will give us very intelligent answers that we can filter ourselves. But if it's that so good, we should be using it. We should be teaching them how to use it. It's just a tool. If you want to use it, you feel comfortable.

It's a great. If you don't use it, that doesn't mean that your class is going to be awful. Your class could be still the best. And I think that we shouldn't be scared that they're going to take our role. That's impossible. And if they are taking our role, it's because we are not doing our job. I think that that's the scary part. When the generative AI makes us change their assessment. Why? Because the assessments maybe they are not the right assessments. I think that that's the scary part. But I will be really encouraged just to give it a try and use it.