Artificial intelligence and the work of teaching

An honest, practical introduction to AI for teachers and education officers. What it is, where it gives you hours back this term, and where it will let you down if you trust it.

What this course is

Artificial intelligence has moved from something in the news to something sitting in your pocket. This course is for the working professional who wants a clear answer to two questions: what is this actually doing, and what can it do for my week?

There is no mathematics and no jargon. Every example comes from a Nigerian secondary school: lesson notes, evaluation questions, letters to parents, ministry circulars, continuous assessment spreadsheets, examination papers. You will finish with prompts you can use the same day and a clear sense of the lines you must not cross.

Who it is for

• Classroom teachers in junior and senior secondary schools
• Heads of department, vice principals and principals
• Education officers, inspectors and ministry and board staff
• Anyone on the STEP programme who has never used an AI tool, or has tried one and was not impressed

What you will be able to do

• Explain in plain language what AI is and how a chat assistant produces its answers
• Choose the right kind of tool for a task and set one up on your own phone
• Draft letters, circulars, minutes and reports in a fraction of the usual time, in your own voice
• Turn one line of your scheme of work into a complete lesson note with local examples
• Build question banks, rubrics and feedback that students can act on
• Get the spreadsheet formula you need by describing the problem in ordinary English
• Write prompts that produce usable output the first time
• Recognise invented facts and bias, and check what needs checking
• Protect student and staff data, and take a defensible position on students using AI

How it is structured

Eleven lessons across four modules, roughly five hours in total. Each lesson takes twenty to thirty five minutes and ends with a short self-check. Each module ends with a quiz, and there is a final assessment at the end of the course.

What you need

• A phone or computer with an internet connection
• No prior experience with AI tools
• No software to install for the course itself, though you will create one free account in Lesson 3
• Some real work from your own desk to practise on, which is what makes the difference

A note on honesty

This course will tell you where these tools fail as clearly as where they help. It will not tell you that AI will transform education, and it will not tell you to be afraid of it. It will tell you what it does, so you can decide for yourself.