Teaching Empathy & Academics through Artificial Intelligence

Teaching students academic content in the time of artificial intelligence becomes more challenging every year; however, one teacher at Colegio Nueva Granada is experimenting with ways to leverage AI to better support student learning while developing their empathetic skills.

As a sociales instructor, Manuela Penalosa is charged with preparing all of her students to pass the Colombian national matriculation exam (ICFES), which includes ensuring they have a strong understanding of the human rights afforded to citizens in the Colombian Constitution. In many classrooms across the nation, this would entail a steady diet of “drill and kill,” providing students with opportunities to memorize the list of rights, then testing their knowledge through multiple choice examinations until they showed these had been committed to memory, at least long enough to get them through the test. Ms. Penalosa had another idea. Instead of rote memorization, Manuela decided to have her students use the Colombian Constitution, powered by artificial intelligence, to address a pressing social need.

Ms. Penalosa’s students created AI hotlines for persons experiences unsafe environments, whether these be at work or home, where they can ask questions about their situations, receive specific explanations about their rights, and get real-time advice on what they should do in the moment. As these hotlines are powered by AI they are safe places to ask questions with no stigma attached and connect immediately to governmental databases to ensure all information is current and accurate. Not only has this project helped our students better understand the plight of people facing domestic and work-related abuses while learning the rights of all Colombian citizens (as the ICFES requires), it has become a project of interest to the municipal government. Thus, Ms. Penalosa’s students now have a meeting arranged with the Bogota Secretariat to discuss how the city might implement a CNG-created AI hotline, such as Valiente, for all citizens.

Click here to try the AI Valiente

By: Gregory Hessee, Manuele Penalosa, Colegio Nueva Granada