A teacher uses AI to create assignments.
A student uses AI to answer them.
The teacher again uses AI to assess and grade the students.
On whose part is AI efficient?
Who is this affecting and who is not affected?
Is teaching and learning still a human process?
So how do we use AI ethically without erasing real learning?
Let me share with you, 10 Ethical Ways Teachers Can Use AI and Still Put Learning First. You can add more to it in the comments section.
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1. For Personalised learning.
Not all students learn the same way. Some may be visual learners while others may love stories. AI can offer help in this aspect if you use or prompt it correctly.
For example, ask AI to help you adapt your lesson on a particular topic for 3 different students. One who is a visual learner, one who struggles with reading and one who loves storytelling.
With this, you are not replacing your teaching with AI, you are leveraging it to bring more students into your teaching. This is you telling them, "I see you, champs. I want this to work for you".
2. To Co-create Learning or Assignments With Students.
Instead of trying to design every activity all by yourself, you can involve your students in the process. This gives them a sense of agency. That would make them feel like they are part of the process and not be seen as a product or receiver.
For example, ask the students to mention a topic they care about that relates with what they are currently learning. "This could be climate change". Then ask them to suggest a prompt for ChatGPT to design a project brief on environmental justice for teenagers who are passionate about access to clean water.
When you involve learners in such a learning design task, they take ownership of their learning process. And this will increase engagement and reduce over-reliance on AI.
3. Ask AI-Resistant Questions
Now you know that your students can prompt ChatGPT to fetch their answers for you. You should also ask them questions that require their thinking rather than providing answers in automation.
For example, instead of asking your students to list or mention the causes of climate change, you can ask them questions like "Based on our last class debates on climate change, which argument do you now believe and why?".
They are the ones who have the memory of what happened and the context they need to answer that question. Help them to own their voices.
4. Teach Your Students How to Critique AI Output.
You need to let your students know that AI is a tool and it's only as powerful as the mind that uses it. But if both teacher and student lose their agency in the teaching-learning process. Then knowledge may become superficial. No deep thinking, no voice, just "robotic learning".
So what should you do better?
You can teach your students how to question, edit, and improve AI-generated outputs. This will help build their critical thinking skills. If not, they will continue to consume and accept everything that looks good to them.
For example, ask AI to provide you some flawed responses that can be critiqued by your students during class activities. It could be about a particular historical event you've taught them. You will see that it's possible to get unreliable outputs from AI.
And that's to show you that AI also has the tendency to offer you biased responses in your quest for knowledge.
If you finally get those responses, present them to your students and ask them to make necessary corrections.
Even if the AI generated answers are right, you can ask them to critique it with questions like
"Whose perspective is prioritised in this story?"
"What sources does this response lack and how can we find or correct it?"
"Whose voice is missing in this story?" .
This reminds me of how @Alison Oldfield will always ask some questions during our seminars.
If your students can figure out what is missing, they are already learning in the process.
5. Design Your Assessments in Ways That Empower Your Students Not Just for Providing Answers to Questions.
One way to do this is by asking them to document how they arrived at answers. Let them explain what they tried, what worked for them and what didn't work. Or what did they find and how did they make it better?
Allow them to explain how they used AI or other digital technologies in the process of finding answers or solving a particular problem.
Ask them what they would do better next time.
While engaging them in this process, be rest assured that you are allowing them to build their metacognitive skills. They will become more reflective and creative learners. Likewise, they can feel ownership of whatever lessons they've learned in that process. And you will be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses
Remember that you are not here to fight AI in Education. You are here to promote its ethical use for the benefit of both learners and teachers.
6. You Can Use AI to Generate Different Perspectives on A Question or Topic and Ask Your Students or Learners to Compare Them.
When you allow them to compare different worldviews on a particular matter, it could help improve their criticality in learning. Also, they would understand that there are always different views and it requires good reasoning to prove a point.
7. Introduce Ethics Discussions into Your Subject Just Like I am Creating This Awareness
While you teach your learners, talk about the benefits of AI in creativity, fairness, and truth. Let them know how and when AI can improve their creativity or reduce their originality.
Encourage them on how to fact-check some AI's outputs before accepting if it's true or not. Where is the source of this information? Awareness is key.
8. Be Transparent About AI Use Tell students when and how you use AI.
This will help you build integrity and trust with your students. I remember sometimes around 2023. I showed a set of my students what I used AI for and how I used it. They became curious and also reached out to on how they can use to learn a particular concept of physics [if I could recall correctly]. Then, ChatGPT's accuracy is not as good as today.
I do use ChatGPT to brainstorm if I need guidance on an idea. With a good prompt, ChatGPT has allowed me to learn some medical concepts in ways that could be explained to a 10 year old child. With constant practice just like @adeeko shared in his recent post, you can master prompting well.
So, you should be transparent about its use, and also encourage your learners to do the same. We are all here to learn. You don't need to pretend or claim a monopoly of a particular knowledge. Not even in this AI era. But what you use it for, why you use it and how you use it matters.
9. Spot-check with Oral Feedback and Dialogue
When you notice that a student's work looks too perfect, you don't need to accuse the student of submitting AI generated answers. What you need to do is to talk through it. Ask the student to explain in their own words. Always remember that not all perfect looking contents are AI outputs. Some students are naturally brilliant. Others might have used AI ethically, to refine their answers and not to replace their efforts. Remember that we are all here to learn and be better than we used to be. #Sakaspeaks
10. I Encourage You to Be An Advocate for AI Literacy, Not AI Dependency
Teach students how AI works, its limits, and how to use it wisely. See AI, ChatGPT and the likes, as a compass. It will help you navigate and explore things in ways you've never imagined. Don't get too afraid of the future to a point where you deprive yourself and your students to leverage digital technologies effectively. #Sakaspeaks
Afeez Olalekan Saka © 2025
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