OpenAI’s latest invention, ChatGPT, has teachers and professors in a panic, especially English and social studies teachers. If you are unfamiliar with ChatGPT, I assume you have been off-world, in stasis, or locked in a Klingon prison colony. However, since many of my readers fall into those categories, I’ll explain:
ChatGPT or GPT-3 is an artificial intelligence chatbot that is much more sophisticated than any other similar chatbots. ChatGPT can write essays – with citations. It can complete math homework and explain the steps. It can generate fiction, journals, and personal narratives. It can write cover letters, recipes, business plans, programming code, and much more. In short, it can complete many of the assignments that teachers and professors use to evaluate their students’ thinking and analysis skills.
How should educators adapt? Do they make changes to their assignments? Do they move all homework into the class? Do they forbid the use of computers? Is that possible or reasonable? On TikTok, Twitter, and other forms of social media, teachers are discussing how to respond to the challenges of teaching in a world where a machine can do your homework in seconds. What should they do?
I asked ChatGPT, “How should English teachers and other teachers who rely on essays to test students' thinking skills adapt their assignments and teaching given that ChatGPT can now do much of the writing (and thinking) for students?”
Here is what it said,” As an AI language model, ChatGPT is not capable of doing the thinking or writing for students. While it can generate text based on a given prompt, it is not capable of understanding or analyzing the content of that text in the same way that a human can. Therefore, English teachers and other teachers who rely on essays to test students' thinking skills should continue to assign and grade essays as they have in the past.
However, it is important for teachers to be aware of the potential for students to use AI tools like ChatGPT to help them with their writing assignments. In such cases, it may be necessary for teachers to put in place additional measures to ensure that students are not simply copying or paraphrasing text generated by these tools. This could include requiring students to submit rough drafts of their essays for review or implementing more rigorous plagiarism detection methods.
Additionally, teachers may want to consider incorporating lessons on the ethical use of technology into their curriculum, to help students understand the importance of original thinking and the potential consequences of using AI tools to cheat on assignments. Overall, while ChatGPT and other AI tools may present some challenges for educators, they should not fundamentally change the way that teachers assess their students' thinking skills through writing assignments.”
While I think all teachers should teach about, “the ethical use of technology” as well as a frank and detailed discussion of what constitutes cheating and the consequences of academic dishonesty, I disagree with ChatGPT’s thesis. I asked it the same question several times and got variations on this same argument. ChatGPT says that the existence of AI tools like GPT-3 should not change teaching practice. I strongly disagree.
Instead of forbidding the use of technological tools, branding them plagiarism or dishonest, or returning to handwriting in bluebooks, I contend that Humanities teachers must embrace this technology and use it further their foundational goals: critical thinking, argumentation, and communication.
I was in middle school when calculators became small and cheap enough to be added to the school supply list. And while I knew the steps to divide large numbers, letting the machine handle that work allowed my teacher to not only enlarge the curriculum but to delve further into mathematical concepts and processes – and class became a whole lot more fun. ChatGPT may be Humanities’ calculator.
Our students can already go online and find or purchase essays on a plethora of topics. Teachers who think they have an assignment that is unique or designed so cheating is not possible soon find that the market has proved them wrong. And while some students crib their work from online sources, which can be detected by plagiarism detection software, others simply provide original essays written by others. The essay arms race is never-ending.
Now ChatGPT can be the worst of both worlds: it is not the students’ work and it is original enough not to be flagged as copying. Time for capitulation, fellow teachers. Skynet has won this war, so it is time to move battlegrounds.
What are we teaching when we ask students to write? On a basic level, we are teaching language and writing skills: sentence structure, organization, the use of evidence, tone, word choice, and grammar. Above this are thinking skills like argumentation, persuasion, textual analysis, historical and literary context, and the relationship between writer and work. There is more, of course.
ChatGPT is a new tool with which to achieve these objectives. Instead of rejecting it and banning it from the classroom, why not make it another tool to achieve our goals? How might we do this?
Use ChatGPT to generate example pieces of work. For some assignments, instead of having students write the essay, ask them to evaluate and improve what ChatGPT writes. Feed student writing into ChatGPT and examine the changes it makes. Give ChatGPT very specific instructions regarding tone, argument, or authorial intent and assess its effectiveness. Compete with ChatGPT. Give students an in-class prompt and then see how their efforts are similar or different from the writing of the AI.
While I agree that writing will now be more often an in-class task rather than homework, ChatGTP could be part of an out-of-class process assignment. Students must show their steps (outline, drafts, etc.), but must also show where they used ChatGPT and where they used other resources (the writing lab, a tutor, a partner in class, etc.). This kind of assignment would allow students and teachers to go through the process together and break down the steps of good thinking, analysis, and communication.
I will probably write further about possible ChatGPT connected assignments. I will look for articles that provide ways to adapt teaching practices to this new technology.
Right now, plagiarism detectors like Turnitin.com may not be able to flag writing by AI. That will probably change. I came across a website that claims to be able to figure out to what degree a piece of writing is most likely written by a bot. I have played with it a little and it has been fooled as often as it was correct.
Like computers, phones, and calculators, teachers who stick their heads in the mud and refuse to change their practices will only provide students with the choice of how to trick them with minimal conflict. Instead, like math teachers and calculators, we need to embrace this new technology, help students use it effectively and ethically, and refocus our lessons on the most important goal of our classes: competent, critical, and creative thinkers and communicators!
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