The students in Calla Bartschi’s Introduction to AI class at Riverside High School in Greer, S.C., are gearing up to present a project showing how artificial intelligence technologies can be used in the agriculture industry.
The students walk around the classroom to collect soil data using Arduino Uno microcontrollers and sensors, which are basically small computers. Later, they’ll analyze the data and create a prototype of an automated system that would help stabilize farm conditions amid environmental challenges and improve crop growth.
Earlier in the school year, the students learned about how AI is being used in the entertainment and health care industries. And later in the semester, they’ll learn about how AI is used in manufacturing and sports analytics.
It’s been “really eye-opening for the students to see something that they interact with a lot but maybe didn’t realize how much AI already existed [in it],” said Bartschi, whose school is part of the Greenville County school district.
The class is a first-year pilot of a new K-12 career and technical education pathway focused on AI that South Carolina is developing. It’s an example of how schools and districts are starting to incorporate the use of AI into CTE programs to prepare kids to think about the technology in the context of their future careers.
Nearly one-third of CTE educators say they expect their district or school to introduce CTE offerings in the fields of digital technology, information technology, AI, and cybersecurity, according to a nationally representative survey of 472 CTE teachers and administrators conducted by the EdWeek Research Center in the fall.
Artificial intelligence and its use are not new. A lot of the tools we interact with daily—navigation apps, facial recognition, social media, voice assistants, search engines, and smartwatches—run on AI. And many industries are already using AI one way or another.
The entrance of the generative AI tool ChatGPT in 2022 reignited discussions about how the fast-evolving technology could reshape the way we work and how students learn.
Educators have been considering what and how much of a role AI should play in student learning, especially as AI advocates say today’s students need to learn how to use it effectively to be successful in future jobs.
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How South Carolina is preparing AI-ready students
The AI CTE pathway that South Carolina started developing in 2022 in partnership with the Southern Regional Education Board prepares students for the workforce by teaching them about industry-specific use cases and providing them with AI skills, including how to train AI, said Ivy Coburn, the division director of education and workforce for the SREB. The SREB is a nonprofit organization that works to improve education in its 16 member states.
“We’re not going to just, overnight, completely change a CTE course or program to fully be all AI,” Coburn said. “What we’re doing is building units around the use case so that students are learning about AI while they’re understanding how it’s used in that industry.”
The pathway will have four units that students are expected to take over four years. The first unit is the introduction, where students explore basic AI concepts while building and designing AI solutions. It culminates with students taking a test to earn a Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals certification.
The curriculum development team is still in the process of developing the rest of the units, Coburn said, but the idea is for students to dive deeper into AI applications for years 2 and 3, and then year 4 will be for an internship and a capstone research project.
“Initially, students expected the course to be, ‘how do I use AI and how do I take advantage of ChatGPT?’” Bartschi said. “It’s really been more about, what more is there to AI and then eventually how do we build it? How do we train it? What does it do well? What does it do poorly?
“They’ve really enjoyed it and really engaged with all the different things we’ve been going through,” she added.
CTE programs should focus on skills and not technology when thinking about how to incorporate AI into their curricula, said Coburn. Those skills include: adaptability, collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, leadership, and problem-solving.
Core academics and career-field knowledge will also continue to be important, she added.
“Trying to make sure that the AI solution matches the program and the learning outcomes of that program would be critical,” Coburn said.
Incorporating AI in CTE programs is still in early stages
A majority of schools and districts, however, are still in the early stages of thinking about how AI should be integrated into CTE programs, according to experts.
“We’re starting to jot down all the spaces where we see AI being used across the CTE programs,” said Angela Mike, the executive director of CTE for the Pittsburgh district.
Much of the equipment available in Pittsburgh’s CTE programs already has AI components in it, Mike said. So she and her staff are examining how CTE teachers are already using those tools and how they can add AI-related lessons to their curricula.
In some cases, individual teachers are starting to incorporate AI tools and discussions about them into their lesson plans.
In Illinois’ Township High School District 214 outside Chicago, computer science teacher Bob Brown has started teaching students how to prompt AI in a way that helps them deepen their understanding of a complex topic or brainstorm solutions to a coding problem, instead of just prompting an AI tool to do the work for them.
For instance, students are learning how to program buttons in a mobile app. They can use AI to ask for explanations, such as: How do I get an integer from a text field? Then, they follow the steps it tells them, Brown said.
“That’s just as valid as hearing a teacher mention it. That’s just as valid as watching a YouTube video,” he said.
Some teachers are hearing from their industry partners about how AI is being used in the real world and what skills they want from students moving into those industries.
For instance, Erika Shiota-Montandon, the automation/robotics teacher for the Greenville district in South Carolina, shared that a student mentor who works at a nearby car manufacturing plant has talked to her students about the AI-powered robots that work alongside people and assist with production and logistics.
Other industry partners that might not be using AI yet are hoping to recruit graduates who have developed AI skills in school.
Jamie Whitlock, Greenville’s CTE academic specialist, said some industry partners are “looking at the kids and younger people to be able to show them and tell them how to leverage [AI technology].”
One big challenge, Mike, the CTE director for the Pittsburgh district, said, is that AI technology is changing so quickly and schools are struggling to catch up.
Many districts, like Pittsburgh, are still in the process of creating AI-related policies or guidelines. An EdWeek Research Center survey conducted in the fall found that 27% of teachers, principals, and district leaders said their school/district doesn’t have a policy on the use of generative AI.
“The jobs are changing so quickly that everybody has to get their head wrapped around it,” Mike said. “We have to be willing to shift with it, so that we’re preparing our students, so that they can move on into the jobs of the future that aren’t even here yet.”
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
