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Student board member outlines Canvas course on 'learning how to learn,' warns against passive AI study
Summary
Miss Fan, a board member, described a two-part Canvas course aimed at middle and high school students to teach study strategies and lifelong learning skills, cautioning that AI-generated summaries can create the illusion of learning if students use them passively.
Miss Fan, speaking during board member reports at the Poway Unified meeting, described a Canvas course she is developing to teach students how to learn more efficiently. She said the course is targeted mainly to middle and high school students and is split into two parts: short-term study strategies for immediate tests and longer-term approaches to optimize learning across a student’s career.
"This isn't because we're bad at learning. It's because we've never really been taught exactly how you learn outside of the classroom," Miss Fan said, and outlined techniques intended to reduce wasted study time and build retention. She said the course will cover recognizing procrastination triggers, prioritizing difficult tasks, and differentiating memorization for systems versus discrete facts.
Miss Fan also raised concerns about passive use of AI: "you can use AI to automatically summarize a dense lecture video and create for you a perfect set of notes...but this is an active learning because your brain isn't really doing anything," she said, arguing that over-reliance on AI summaries can reduce deep processing and long-term retention.
A fellow board member praised the proposal as “wise beyond your years” and emphasized active learning and timing as valuable for students. The board did not vote on the course; Miss Fan presented it as an update and a project she is developing with input from the Student Services Advisory Committee.
