5. Adding Student AI Reflection to Improve AI Use

In today’s world, the ability to use AI is quickly becoming as essential as reading, writing, and digital literacy. It's a skill we actively encourage in adults. In resumes, in workplaces, in professional development, but when students use it, they often face suspicion or even punishment.

That sends the wrong message.

If AI is a valued skill for adults, then it’s our job to teach students to use it ethically, creatively, and reflectively. Not to shut it down, but to open it up within the guardrails of learning.

Because here’s the truth: AI is already in our classrooms. Students are using it, whether we give them permission or not.

So instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, what if we taught students to use it well?

What if we made space for students to use AI as a thinking tool, while still honoring academic integrity, creativity, and critical thinking?

The truth is, we don’t need to fear student AI use, we need to guide it.

From Fear to Framework

Many teachers worry that letting students use AI means they’ll skip the thinking. But that fear comes from a mindset where AI is only a shortcut.

Instead, we can help students learn to use AI as:

• a research assistant

• a thought challenger

• a translator of complex ideas

• a writing partner

• a spark for new questions

But here’s the key: we must ask students to reflect on how they used it. Not just what AI told them, but how they built on it.

Student Reflection Questions: Making Thinking Visible

When students use AI in an assignment, invite them to answer these four questions to reflect on their thinking and process:

1. What did you use AI for in this assignment?
   (e.g., brainstorming, outlining, checking grammar, simplifying a text)

2. How did it change your thinking or writing?
   (e.g., gave you a new perspective, helped you see a better structure, revealed gaps in your knowledge)

3. What decisions did you make on your own after using it?
   (e.g., changed the tone, revised the ideas, rejected parts of the AI response, added original analysis)

4. What would you do differently next time you use AI?
   (e.g., ask better questions, compare different outputs, use it earlier/later in the process)

These questions are less about compliance and more about cultivating ethical, intentional use the kind of thinking that matters far more than any single prompt.

Alternate Example: Reflection Questions

• Usage
• How did you use AI in completing this assignment?
• (Examples: brainstorming ideas, generating an outline, checking grammar, revising tone, fact-checking, coding help, etc.)
• Decision Making
• What did you decide to keep, change, or discard from the AI’s suggestions, and why?
• Critical Thinking
• What part of the work reflects your own thinking beyond what AI suggested?
• Ethics & Integrity
• How did you make sure your use of AI was ethical and aligned with your teacher’s expectations?
• Next Steps
• If you had to do a similar assignment again, how would you use AI differently?

Teaching Integrity, Not Just Compliance

This kind of reflection helps students:

• become more aware of their own thinking

• avoid over-reliance or plagiarism

• take ownership of their choices

• prepare for the real-world use of AI in college and careers

And it helps teachers see how AI is really being used—so we can celebrate the good, coach the gray, and redirect the rest.

The Bottom Line

AI in classrooms is happening.

When we empower students to use AI responsibly, we’re building relevance and maintaining rigor.

Let’s stop saying “Don’t use AI,” and start asking,
“How did AI support your thinking today?”

4. The Interface Isn’t the Innovation

In my last post, I mentioned the idea that just updating a user interface does not update an assignment, we need to update user experience as well.  Previous Post [Rethinking the Assignment in the Age of AI]

Just like in tech, updating the user interface doesn’t guarantee transformation. A better interface can improve usability, but if the underlying system (the instructional design) stays the same, then the learning and the learning experience doesn’t really evolve.  Just a marginal improvement on the usability.

That’s the current risk with AI.  We could be using a groundbreaking technology to marginally improve yesterday’s assignments.

We say we’re "using AI in education," but often, we’re just using AI to do old things faster. Rewriting a worksheet with ChatGPT might make the language more engaging, but if the assignment is still a static, one-directional task, we’ve missed the deeper potential.

So What Should We Do Instead?

Start treating AI not ONLY as a teacher productivity tool, but as a student learning partner.

Instead of asking, “How can AI help me write this worksheet faster?”
Ask: “How can AI help my students think more deeply, more independently, and more collaboratively?”

Here are three steps to shift the model:

1. Redesign the Task, Not Just the Format
   Ask students to explore, create, analyze, and reflect, not just complete. AI can help them do research, generate ideas, simulate perspectives, or test theories. But only if the task is built for that.

2. Put AI in Students’ Hands
   Let students prompt the AI, question it, refine its output, and critique its suggestions. This builds agency, metacognition, and a real-world skill. It also moves the AI from being a delivery mechanism to a thinking partner.

3. Shift from Answers to Thinking
   Replace “What’s the right answer?” with “What are all the ways we could approach this?” That’s the difference between automation and transformation.  And AI can guide students through multiple perspectives if we let it.

3. Rethinking the Assignment in the Age of AI

Imagine you're a software engineer building a productivity app. Over the years, you redesign the user interface switching from a clunky desktop app to a sleek web interface, then to a mobile app, and eventually to a voice assistant. Each iteration looks more modern, is easier to use, and uses newer tech. The user interface is improving, but the task never changes for the user. Its lipstick on a pig, eventually the app will no longer be relevant?

Now swap out the app for a classroom assignment, the worksheet.

For decades, worksheets have been a staple of classroom instruction.  Over time, like software interfaces, they've been “modernized”:

• Paper worksheet (v1.0) – The original analog. Print, copy, distribute, collect, grade.

• Scanned worksheet (v1.1) – Save paper. Send as an image. Students print at home.

• Fillable worksheet (v2.0) – Add text boxes. Now students can type instead of write.

• Google Form (v2.5) – Add automation. Immediate feedback. Still mostly multiple-choice.

• Fillable PDF (v2.6) – Slightly more interactive. Better formatting. Still the same questions.

• AI-rewritten worksheet (v3.0) – Use ChatGPT to rewrite the questions. Fresh wording, maybe new contexts. But… still a worksheet.

Each version may feel like progress. But from the learner’s perspective, the core function hasn’t changed. It’s still a teacher-designed task with right answers and little room for exploration. The look and feel evolve, but the purpose and learning experience remain fixed.

You ask me questions, I find or remember the answers and fill them in, then I turn in the assignment and get my grade.  Not dissimilar from the game fetch.  That's right, we made fetch happen.

A Call to Lead Differently

If all we do with AI is produce shinier worksheets, we’re doing old things in new ways and calling it innovation.

But if we reimagine the role of the student as a designer, investigator, and collaborator then use AI as part of a Dynamic Thought Environment, then we’re not just upgrading the interface we’re upgrading the learning experience.

That’s the real opportunity.
And that’s the challenge we must rise to meet.