Episode 11.3: Teaching in the age of AI: Ethics, innovation and classroom impact

Meet William Tai, the coordinator of the Doceo Center in University of Idaho’s College of Education, Health and Human Sciences. Artificial intelligence is already in our classrooms. Tai joins us to discuss how teachers can take advantage of AI for lesson planning and what ethical issues might arise with classroom AI use. 

Email us at vandaltheory@uidaho.edu.

How many suggestions or examples do you give ChatGPT when you are asking for help?

Tai introduces us to U of I’s Doceo Center, which serves as an educational technology hub, giving faculty members, pre-service teachers and in-service educators hands-on access to emerging tools.

The discussion revolves around generative AI and explores how teachers can use it beyond basic writing prompts — from accelerating lesson planning to creating engaging learning materials. Tai highlights how thoughtful use of AI can significantly reduce prep time while supporting deeper student engagement.

A central focus of the episode is ethical AI use in classrooms. Tai outlines three key concerns educators must understand. Through practical examples, he explains how false citations (a type of AI hallucination), embedded algorithmic bias and hidden malicious prompts can affect learning environments, and why keeping a “human in the loop” is essential when using AI tools. He also describes a professional development course he developed to help K-12 teachers build safeguards and ethical practices around AI integration.

The conversation continues with an introduction to prompt engineering, including zero-shot, few-shot and chain-of-thought prompting, demonstrating how educators can refine their inputs by providing examples to get more accurate and useful outputs from AI systems.

Tai also shares findings from collaborative research examining AI as a study tool for graduate students, revealing increased awareness, usage and content understanding, alongside ongoing concerns about accuracy and trust.

He closes with a powerful reminder: generative AI is here to stay, and by learning to navigate it responsibly, educators can harness its potential to enhance teaching, learning and human development. 

Music

“Young Republicans” by Steve Combs via freemusicarchive.org, not modified.

“Melontronica” by Matthew Cropper via Amphibious Zoo.

Chapters

(0:00) How much instruction do you give ChatGPT?
(3:08) Getting to know William Tai
(4:21) How is generative AI used in education?
(7:35) What are AI hallucinations?
(9:12) What is machine bias in AI?
(11:42) What are prompt injection attacks?
(14:20) How teachers can improve their prompts
(20:14) Can AI be a study aid?
(25:57) Final thoughts