Artifical Intelligence at Te Puna Wai o Waipapa

Te Puna Wai o Waipapa - Hagley College are conducting three Artificial Intelligence trials in 2024. All trials are using Microsoft Copilot and are focused on the senior school. Top of mind for all trials is the New Zealand Qualification Authourity's Authenticity statement: 

Therefore AI is only used in the teaching and learning phase of the process:

Trial 1 involves using AI as a Research Assistant in Year 13 Health, Trial 2 focuses on Year 11 students gaining feedback to improve their writing and Trial 3 sees Year 13 students using AI as a project stakeholder. 

Student feedback from all three trials so far has been positive:

“It was mean! I’ll use it again to research my next assignment… it made summarising useful articles much easier (Student I).”

“It was quicker when there was a bunch of complicated jargon, we could make the article easier to understand (Student F).”

“I prefer teachers, but when asking a teacher, there’s always about 8 other people wanting help too. With the AI, I was able to get in-depth feedback that would take a human quite a bit of time (student B)”.

“I contact the AI stakeholder anytime & get a guaranteed response. AI gives me good feedback and saves time; I talk to it like a human (Student V)”.

Achievement Standard assessment results from the Year 13 Health trial showed a significant improvement in achievement which may have been attributed to using AI:

A summary of teacher findings across the three trials showed: 

• AI has the potential to support student learning and possibly achievement

• Some misinterpretations from Copilot

• Students aren’t as savvy with AI as we expected

Early findings suggest that AI can be a useful tool for student learning. We are excited about how this can be integrated into education at Te Puna Wai o Waipapa.