Project Bacgkround
The GLOW project was inspired in part by teacher complaints and partly by a desire for professional development by pedagogical leaders. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, European second language classrooms were faced with a new group of learned in a scale that they were unprepared for. Similar events in the wake of the Arab spring and the inclusion of Eastern-Europe into the EU have spurred teachers to adapt. In this most recent influx, the technological advancements within machine learning had led to generative artificial intelligence. The adoption of generative AI was quickly deemed pivotal for survival, regardless of which field you belonged to. Simultaneously, teachers faced an incredibly challenging situation in having to adapt to varying learners, all coming into their classroom, with different needs and requiring more planning time than normal. The partners therefore decided to explore the idea of using generative AI to solve the issue of workload for teachers.
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Motivated by several other aspects, such as increasing digital skills as well as allowing teachers to retain autonomy, the GLOW project wanted to give teachers a tool, but also a guide in how to use the tool. To avoid everything being a nail, and generative AI being the metaphorical hammer, the project strived to teach and prove that generative AI could lessen the workload of teachers in their challenging classrooms.
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Teachers in both organisations had varying degrees of experience with the use of generative AI professionally, and a spectrum of feelings regarding generative AI. With extreme ideas on both ends of the spectrum, such as “gen AI is useless” to “gen AI will take my job”, the project group decided to ensure a basic foundational understanding for all teachers. Three activities were set up, to ensure that teachers were involved continuously and that they were represented. Firstly, teachers were given a chance to answer a questionnaire regarding their challenges and knowledge regarding generative AI. Secondly, they received training based on this and were given the task of producing 10 lesson plans over a year, with two more trainings provided to them during this period. Finally, they will see the guide and influence its content to ensure that is helpful and easy to adopt. Training the teachers was essential for the project to create a minimum knowledge foundation for all participants.
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GLOW has the underlying aim to create digital resilience amongst its test group and to expand to the resilience of all teachers in a rapidly changing environment. To exemplify this, a factor which was outside of the groups control truly visualised this rapid development. At the time of writing the application the choice was made to use ChatGPT, as the most commonly known LLM at the time of writing the application. At the time, version 3.5 was available. In the time since the application was submitted, the project started and finally finished, several new versions have come to market and at the time of writing we are using version 5.2 of ChatGPT. In this we find the wider reason why this project is necessary for teachers. We are in a time where development is rapid, meaning that the skill of adoption and adaptation matters more than singular tools. Regardless of whether our metaphorical hammer is made of titanium, has a carbon fibre handle or comes with a spring loaded force detector with Bluetooth, it is the act of hitting the nail on the head which is important.
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From the beginning, the main audience has been teachers, and this project has focused on second language teachers in Norway and Belgium. Whilst we understand that this can feel like a small and exclusive group, we believe that the majority of this guidebook and project can be useful for all professionals who wish to make better use of generative AI in their work.
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GLOWs aims are directly linked to a challenge the teachers have been facing, which has been the increased workload in lesson planning. We have therefore included examples and best practice related to their field. The underlying principles however can be transferred to other fields, and we hope that firstly all teachers, of all age groups can make use of this guidebook. Our secondary target groups are learners of second languages themselves. This guidebook will also allow them to create personalised lesson plans, based on their challenges. This was not originally an intended result, but as our teachers make use of generative AI lesson plans, we see that the ease of access allows all users to work in a similar way. Teachers have used their expertise to tweak and adjust some of the results given to them by the generative AI, and we will therefore advise caution when using it for personal use.
For second language teachers of adults, we hope that this guidebook solves the very real problem of time and cognitive constraints. We have observed and received feedback regarding the heavy load teachers face in the newer classrooms and have aimed to lessen this load. The guide is not a complete list of possible ways to use generative AI and nor is it going to be something that can ever be seen as finished. As mentioned in the introduction, in such a rapidly developing field there is room for changes, developments, new ideas and new ways of working. Our guide serves as a foundation to build further upon, a step towards the metaphorical top.