These are a few of the questions the Montana Digital Academy is exploring through its new Frontier Learning Lab at the University of Montana.
In 2009, the Montana Legislature created the MTDA as a way to help students across the state access online learning tools and even fully remote classes. Last year, it opened the Frontier Learning Lab, which conducts AI training events in schools across the state and has an AI help desk that's been recognized by Google.
As MTDA Executive Director Jason Neiffer said in an interview at the Frontier Learning Lab on Friday, “How do you provide educational opportunities for students that are in Busby?”
A NEW FRONTIER
Last year, the legislature expanded MTDA to create the Frontier Learning Lab, which Neiffer described as an “experimental space” focused on incorporating evolving tech — from AI to virtual reality — in schools where it makes sense.
“Our legislature and the governor's office realized that there’s a big thing coming here that we want to be ahead of,” Neiffer said.
The lab exists under the MTDA umbrella, and Neiffer works closely with Frontier Learning Lab Director Caitlin Byers.
Neiffer could only think of two other states — Michigan and Utah — with something similar to the Frontier Learning Lab.
The lab has just graduated its first cohort of 20 teachers trained in AI to serve as a resource on the topic for their districts and already has more teachers interested in going through the same program.
Some of the "most productive" conversations Neiffer's had with teachers have been with those scared of using AI in the classroom or concerned about students using it to cheat.
"I get that because, to be frank, the stuff is a little scary,” he said.
Concerns run the gamut, from student privacy and security to how to assess students in the era of AI.
Cheating isn’t a new phenomenon and students have taken shortcuts for decades, Neiffer said.
Students have been known to use a restaurant’s AI chatbots intended to help customers order a meal to help them with their homework, Byers said. They can trick an AI chatbot by saying they’re a teacher looking for an answer key to the worksheet they need to complete.
Superintendent of Lone Rock School Teresa Weems told the Missoulian that students can ask AI bots to “humanize” an assignment to read like it was done by a seventh-grader, or make it sound more like “their voice,” or even write it to earn a lower grade to seem more authentic.
AI wasn’t initially created with the intention of being used by students, Byers said, but rather as productivity support for professionals.
It’s not that students shouldn’t use AI outright, she said, but that AI as it was presented to the public at large “was not designed for developing brains in education spaces or in their personal spaces.”
Young kids don’t have the experience to understand when an AI chatbot might be flattering them to continue the conversation, “because that’s what it was trained to do,” she said.
AI use in schools should be “safe, specific and responsible,” she said.
But there are AI programs with the appropriate guardrails to be used in school settings, Neiffer said, and the lab partners with two: SchoolAI, which operates a chat bot, and TrueMark, which diagnoses whether an assignment was completed by a student or AI. Public schools across the state are using the programs through MTDA.
READY OR NOT
Ignoring AI isn't an option either, Neiffer said.
“It's going to be a factor in work, it's going to be a factor in our democracy, it's going to be a factor in the way we live our lives,” he said.
Neiffer compared AI to how critical cell phones have become, “even though we have plenty of evidence that perhaps it introduces some things that we don't like into the ether.”
“Even if you hate AI, or you're all in on AI, you need to pull your colleagues into this, and it probably does present an existential discussion about education that requires all hands on deck,” Neiffer said.
“Ultimately, we're going to have to face the consequences either way,” he said.
REMOTE LEARNING OFFERING
Schools also use MTDA to help fill the gaps when experiencing a teacher shortage and for students who work better in a remote learning setting can access the courses as well.
“I wish that there were enough teachers and those with a background of pedagogy and content that every student everywhere could get whatever class they want in any format,” he said. “Understanding that that's not realistic, then what is it that we can do to make sure the environment is as good as it can be?”
For example, MTDA has an Indigenous language course catalog that includes classes for Nehiyahw (Cree) and Apsáalooke (Crow), among others, which are available to students in Montana public schools that work with the academy.
Montana, like many other states, has experienced a teacher shortage in recent years, with 850 openings listed on the Office of Public Instruction job board as of Monday. That’s down from 1,000 vacancies in 2023.
More than 90 percent of students who took a course through MTDA reported they were satisfied with their experience last year, Neiffer said, noting it’s important to design programming to meet kids where they are at, “especially if we're the only choice they have to take the course.”
MTDA has also partnered with Gallatin College to provide some online courses that count toward degree requirements, including an Intro to Education class, with the hope of helping create a teacher pipeline in the state alongside existing efforts.
“We spend a lot of time telling students to prep for STEM careers, that's great, we spend a lot of time talking about trades careers with students, that's great too,” he said. “But I think education also deserves the same pathway.”
© 2026 Ravalli Republic, Hamilton, Mont. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
