Technology Essentials in Education Episode 32:
Why 84% of Teachers Worry AI Is Eroding Core Student Skills

Hello there. My name is Monica Burns, and welcome to Technology Essentials in Education.

On today's episode, I welcome Luke Straub, Content Director at Jotform, to chat about how teachers really feel about AI.

Luke works on the education team at Jotform, where he connects with educators to learn about their pain points and share their stories through case studies on the Jotform blog.

His team recently surveyed educators across the country to get a better sense of their AI anxiety, specifically for an AI anxiety in education research project.

Luke and I actually caught up in real life face-to-face at a conference recently, and conversations about AI were happening all over that event.

And I know today, as we unpack the survey data, you're going to get lots of insights and information that you can use in your practice and that you may want to dive into a bit deeper.

Let's get into the conversation.

This episode is brought to you by Jotform.

Jotform provides an all-in-one solution to streamline administrative tasks, enhance community engagement, and foster innovation.

Using their no-code, drag-and-drop Jotform and workflows, your teams can securely clearly collect and store data, automate tasks, and collaborate on team resources.

Educational institutions are also eligible for a 30% discount on Jotform Enterprise.

Head to their website to learn more, Jotform.com slash enterprise slash education.

Welcome to the podcast.

I'm so excited to chat with you today about how teachers really feel about AI, which is a big topic.

But before we get into all of that, can you share a little bit with listeners, what is your role at Jotform? What does your day-to-day look like?

Yeah, hey, Monica. I'm a content marketer on the education team at Jotform.

Basically, I'd say my role is like adjacent to education. What we try to do is learn as much as we can about educators, what their pain points are, what they need to thrive on a day-to-day basis.

Then we look at what we have, and as a content marketer, I create content that can help them out, help them save some time with our tools.

Yeah, and speaking of those pain points, I know you and I not too long ago saw each other at a conference in Orlando, right? Hearing from lots of educators on the ground, having those kind of quick conversations.

But you all had a big survey that you put out, which is another way to go, sometimes beyond just a conversation where someone might be a little hesitant.

Jotform has a survey of 70 U.S. educators about their feelings towards AI in education.

Before we get into what you heard, what inspired your team to conduct this research?

You mentioned it is another way to keep that line of communication open.

Something I should have mentioned off the top is another thing that is on my day-to-day is I get to talk to educators to prepare case studies for our blog.

This is another part of that, just keeping that line of communication open. Like I said, we want to learn about where their bottlenecks are in their workflows, when they can get more done.

As you know, we already did a project, EdTech Trends 2026, that covered a wide range of issues, very insightful. We learned a lot, but AI was only one part of that project.

We wanted to dive further into that. We also wanted to talk to more educators. We talked to more administrators in this survey. We talked to more support staff in this survey. That definitely gave us a lot of great insight that we're definitely going to dive into pretty shortly.

Something else that inspired me is, like I mentioned, I talked to educators. Every time AI comes up, they're very excited about one aspect of AI.

You know, they're like, look, I can get more done outside of the classroom administration, and they're super stoked about it.

And then when the topic turns to students using AI, it's like a completely different vibe.

So that was another part of the inspiration. We really wanted to dive into that and really figure out what's going on there.

Yeah, and that's such a great point about that you can hear a lot of different things on one topic when you're having a conversation with someone, and I think it can be hard to just make someone comfortable sharing all their feelings, even if it might feel contradictory for them. They might not be quite sure how to share that with someone that they're talking to.

And so that's one of the reasons why I think your survey, and survey data is so interesting, because it really affords this opportunity for someone to tell a bigger picture about their experiences.

One of the standout findings is that 84% of teachers worry AI could erode students' skills. Can you tell us a little bit more about what educators shared around that specific concern?

Yeah, that was by far the number one concern. I mean, across all levels, we talked to multiple roles, classroom teachers, college professors, administrators, and support staff. We're talking to educators that are dealing with that.

Jotform AI is a great tool for AI that are teaching children, not only K-12 but grade school level. We're talking to professors who deal with adults, adult students, and across all measures, that was the number one concern, that AI really has a kind of scary possibility.

I mean, it's pretty wild to think about. But when you look at what we all know these LLMs are capable of, if you give ChatGPT to a student, what kind of can of worms that can open as far as actual erosion of student skills, which is very concerning for all teachers, the vast majority of teachers, like you said, 84%.

But a couple comments I did want to share, because you said this is good stuff here as far as insights. One educator said it's taken away the opportunity for students to learn through struggle.

That encapsulates a lot of it.

Teachers are very excited about the possibility for AI to handle stuff, take stuff off their work plate, but the actual learning is a completely different story.

Another comment, the over-reliance in AI is causing students to be incurious and addicted to performing at the lowest level.

Now, that's got to be crushing for an educator whose passion is to raise these students' level of knowledge and ability.

Another comment is students need to try to be OK with the idea of trying and that is the key way to grow and mature. Outcomes, the paper itself, are never the point. We desperately need thinkers, end quote.

That comment did kind of make me laugh a little bit because as a student, I'm like, OK, I do want a good result on the paper. Of course, that's not the point. The point is you need to do what you can do from your own experience, your own brain, frankly, and improve.

And there is the real concern here that there's going to be no improvement. It's just going to be OK. You're going to let a machine think for you and you're not going to develop.

That's going to be crushing for a teacher when their passion is to do the exact opposite of that. So it's easy to understand these concerns, taking all that into consideration.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's really interesting even how you framed that, because so many of the educators I work with are having similar concerns.

At the secondary level, they might see that in their day to day. They're watching a student who might pop a question into a chatbot and go from A to Z without any kind of pausing right in between.

But then you also have a second or third grade teacher whose students might not have these tools in front of them. This is a pathway that they may be approaching.

For a lot of educators, that concern around that over-reliance is one of the words that you use. Students not having a sense of curiosity is, of course, a concern when you watch what an AI chatbot can do when it's posed with a pretty big question or a big task in front of it.

At the same time, I know your survey result asked many different questions. Nearly two in three educators don't expect AI to reduce the need for teachers anytime soon.

It's kind of interesting to have both of those data points right next to each other. How do you make sense of these two findings?

This survey is really great because it kind of all works together. There's a bunch of pieces to it. The more you look at it and the more I've read the report and digested what's in there, I'm like, OK, this is like a bunch of puzzle pieces that kind of fit together a little bit.

Teachers and educators don't think that AI is going to take jobs away because they understand that AI cannot do their job. We're just talking about an LLM. We all know they have their benefits.

Jotform AI has many benefits, but as far as someone learning and progressing, fine-tuning their critical thinking skills and everything that goes along with that, teachers know that AI can't do that for them.

If that ever happens, we're a long way from that. Who knows what the future holds, but at the moment, definitely teachers are not concerned at all.

One thing I thought was interesting is when we asked teachers overall, do you believe AI will make the education profession stronger or weaker, 33% of overall educators said AI will make the education profession slightly stronger.

That was the highest number we had. It was a little bit of a mixed bag there. It was actually kind of split like in four different quadrants as far as slightly stronger, slightly weaker.

Of course, we have some educators who are very concerned and the like, but the majority thought, or the highest percentage thought that AI could make their profession slightly stronger.

So not only are they not worried about losing their job, many of them are cautiously optimistic or even cautiously excited about what AI can do for them.

Of course, at Jotform, we like to save teachers time and teachers are saying the same thing with AI and the possibilities there.

So not only that, not worried that their job can be taken by AI, and they also know that it can help them.

That's where you get many educators saying that their profession questions become slightly stronger because of all this, but there's still a lot to get through as far as how it's implemented and all of that.

And I think that's a really important piece for people to take into consideration while they're unpacking these survey results is that you can have educators holding on to a lot of different feelings about a big topic at the same time, and they're not necessarily contradicting one another either.

That really gets to a piece I wanted to ask you about that overall, looking at all the survey data, the biggest fear among educators isn't their job loss, it really is around that critical thinking, that learning loss.

Can you unpack a bit what that looks like in some of the responses you received?

One educator said something that I thought makes sense. One teacher said that AI has no use at all for students below seventh grade.

Basically, the sentiment is that the more fundamental the learning tasks, the less AI should be involved.

Another educator said students don't know the steps in the process to figure something out. They just ask and expect the answer, which negates the foundational knowledge and the scaffolding needed to be able to perform higher level thinking and tasks.

This will lead to a dearth in our ability to innovate and create further. Use it for complacency.

Once again, the closer the teacher is to the classroom and seeing the impact that AI can have, the more concerned they really are.

The learning loss is, like I said, you put that with the cautious optimism as far as AI in administration.

One comment from a teacher said AI only really supports learning, planning, and administrative tasks, which are an insignificant part of a teacher's work day.

Honestly, it just makes it so I'm working less outside of contract hours, which could actually lead to more teacher retention, is what this educator said.

So you really have this puzzle pieces all fit together pretty quickly.

You have educators who know the power of AI and they're dealing with adult students, of course, as far as professors go.

But in general, it's kind of like, OK, students, you're not ready for this yet. You're just not ready.

Of course, use it if you want to plan your vacation or something, but you're just not quite there yet.

A quick note from the presenter of today's episode, Jotform.

Jotform lets you build a form in minutes.

Student survey forms, homework submission forms, online quizzes, and so much more.

You can start from scratch, or if you want to get a head start, check out their collection of free Form Templates designed with teachers, schools, and districts in mind.

Learn more about Jotform and how educational institutions can get a 30% discount on Jotform Enterprise.

Head to their website to learn more. Jotform.com slash enterprise slash education.

All the pieces fit together as far as that goes.

Just the different roles that someone might have also impacts their feelings because they're seeing different things and hearing different things.

The data that you've collected shows that classroom teachers tend to be the most cautious about AI, while administrators and even college faculty lean a bit more optimistic.

Why do you think there's that gap between these roles in the data?

Well, first of all, when I talk to educators that are saving time with AI, they're so excited about it.

But as far as the data goes, 48% of administrators and 55% of college faculty reported feeling optimistic about AI.

But on the other hand, in K through 12, 50% of high school teachers reported feeling anxious about AI.

So what you have here is administrators kind of like, all right, let's go. We want to save time. We want to be more productive so we can concentrate on the big picture ideas, how to move their campus forward.

They don't want to be mired in administrative tasks. Nobody does. And that includes teachers.

They're more than willing or at least willing to try automating some in-class processes, simple stuff like permission slips or creating a form really quickly with AI.

But the closer you are to the classroom, you see the impact. You see these students like educators told us in the survey that are just looking at students and projecting forward into the future.

That's something I give educators a lot of credit for. They're not just worried about what's going on in their classroom at that moment or during that classroom period. They have legit concerns that impact more than just their classroom.

So the closer they get, the more they see how AI is impacting the student. The further away they are, the more they see the benefits of how it impacts the school in a positive fashion, where you can just get more done and school administration.

That's one of the biggest pain points in education. If AI can help solve that, they're all for it, and the further away from the classroom you are, the less you have to worry about that impact in the classroom.

You're just kind of seeing different things throughout the day.

One of the things that your survey found was that newer teachers or early career educators, we could call them, 82% of that group say that they avoid AI due to fear of potential consequences, which might be the opposite of what someone would think when they say a younger person or newer to a field might be more energized on trying something.

But that wasn't the case from the data you collected. What stood out for you when it comes to this group and how they responded?

That really surprised us. No lie. When you think about the position they're in, they are less tenured. They are a little bit more concerned about maybe appearances.

I just kind of addressed the issue of the generational gap a little bit, and it's kind of similar in that fashion.

So they don't want to use AI incorrectly. They don't want to perhaps impact their reputation in some sort of way.

I think it really goes to the fact that they just need guidance. This mixed bag of emotions and feelings really does come back to guidance.

Everyone's getting the same level of guidance or lack thereof. But when you have someone that's just new to teaching, and there's all this uncertainty swirling around, they're going to kind of retreat a little bit, is what we found.

Very surprising. When you think about the world of education, it does make a little bit of sense.

At first glance, there's definitely that, are you sure? And then as you said, you unpack it a bit, some of the things that they are facing when it comes to navigating a new role, a new space that they're inhabiting.

All the different decisions that they have to make are all new to them.

When I was having conversations about tech integration without the AI piece 10, 15 years ago with educators, a lot of times the thought on the outside is that new teachers love all the new technology.

If the teacher says something, orient the student to that statement. Let it be natural and indiciable, but do not tense up students by snagging what sounds and does not sound natural or natural.

It really does make sense that that is why that group might respond that way.

You mentioned or alluded to the policy piece or the guidelines, and when someone's not sure of their guidelines, that might also make them a little hesitant.

The survey also found that having a formal AI policy in place doesn't necessarily ease educator anxiety. What do you think that tells us about what teachers actually need?

I think a policy is a good start, but it's just a start. It's like a lot of this is just starting.

You can put a bunch of guidelines on a piece of paper, but if you don't really have a consensus about how AI should be used or could be used in the classroom, you don't really come together and make that policy.

It's kind of like a holistic experience where everybody is involved. Everybody gets to have their say, and there really may be even a conversation before you write that policy.

A little bit of like, okay, this really is okay. There's room for new ideas. We can change our policy.

So yeah, it's just a start. The training gives them the confidence to be able to be like, okay, I know this is how we have all decided that AI is, this is a great way to use AI.

I have the complete confidence to move forward and use AI in this fashion.

If I got a piece of paper that told me how to use AI, I'm like, okay, there's a million ways to do this. Are we sure? Are we sure I can't do this? Are we sure I can't do that?

I really think it all demands a conversation amongst everyone on campus, dang near, to not only have a policy but have training in place and really make sure that teachers and educators know that we've all agreed this is a good way to go.

That's gonna help those young teachers too, especially. Just to give them that guideline, the sense of community around something new.

The survey data found that administrative tasks, lesson planning, grading, and feedback were all things where educators were most open.

Jotform AI supports the planning and preparation teachers do on a regular basis.

I mentioned the puzzle pieces all fitting together. This is great news. I feel like we can help a lot of educators because we see Jotform AI as a way to help teachers.

There's a lot of awesome products out there that are student facing, but that's not what we are necessarily.

We're more focused on the educators. We definitely help create forms very quickly that can be in front of a student, but we're more about data collection and streamlining administration.

As far as registration and enrollment, managing approvals like for internal requests, permission slip handling, organizing signups for extracurricular activities, following up with parents, scheduling parent teacher conferences, and teachers as well in classroom.

There are some forms that can be in front of students, like quizzes and student surveys, but at the end of the day, it's helping save teachers and educators time.

The AI tools we have make it much shorter to create videos and forms because I just use Jotform AI to spin up a quick form, fill it out, and display the table.

We really like what we learned from the data because we really feel like we can help.

For anyone who's listening who is taking the data and putting it into action, they could absolutely see the connections to what is possible with Jotform AI.

In particular, to quickly build some of these pieces that are really running behind the scenes.

For a teacher or a school leader who's listening and wants to dig into this data, where can they find the full report and learn more about Jotform's work in education?

Absolutely. On our blog, Jotform.com slash blog, you can search for AI anxiety and education. You can also search for my name, Luke Straub. That article will come right up.

Luke, this has been such a great conversation to unpack the data, which might feel intimidating for someone who hasn't gone through survey data.

You did all that heavy lifting in terms of finding the stories and finding this information and pulling it together for people to explore.

Where can people connect with you? Where can they learn more about your work?

Right, absolutely. You can click on my name on the article. I wrote the AI anxiety report. You can click on my name and get to my contact form that way.

Also, you can get to the contact form at the end of the blog post. Also, definitely check out, I already plugged our YouTube channel, check out Jotform EdTech.

Got all kinds of tutorials and also more insight from the EdTech Trends 2026 report, which is a lot of good information there. So yeah, that's where to check it out.

Perfect. This has been wonderful, Luke. Thank you so much for taking everyone right through this information and through some next steps for them to consider as they're diving in.

Happy to do it. I had a great time.

It was lots of fun chatting with Luke today for this episode.

If you want more information about the survey, make sure to head over to the Jotform blog.

There are tools and resources there above and beyond the survey data, so you will definitely find some things that you can dig into.

Now let's finish up this episode like we always do with a few key takeaways.

First, use surveys and quick forms to gather honest feedback from your school community related to a big topic like AI in education.

Remember that educators can hold different feelings about AI at the same time, like excitement about time savings and concern about the impact to student learning.

Check in with your new early career teachers about their feelings and thoughts around AI.

Many of them may avoid it out of fear of consequences and need clear guidance the most.

Explore Jotform AI to speed up form creation, whether that's permission slips, quizzes, signups, you name it, and you can dig into the full AI anxiety and education report on the Jotform blog.

A big thank you to Jotform, the presenter of today's episode.

To learn more about Jotform and how educational institutions can get a 30% discount on Jotform Enterprise, head to Jotform.com slash enterprise slash education.