Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT in Education – Banish or Embrace?

The sudden rise of AI and ChatGPT

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of those things that seems to have been talked about for ages. At one point us teachers could dismiss it as one of those technology things that doesn’t really concern us. Video games, driverless cars and domestic robots…

And out of nowhere, ChatGPT emerged with a bang, and before we knew it, people in education really had to take notice. I must admit that I casually ignored it for a while, listening nonchalantly while colleagues told me how amazing it was, but never bothering to try it for myself. 

That was until I ironically had to write some lessons on AI and was forced to see ChatGPT in action with my own eyes. Surprisingly it was very easy to use and the sign-up process was painless. I submitted my first question, something about creating a lesson plan for trainee teachers related to classroom management. And when I saw the ChatGPT wheels in motion, I was gobsmacked. It had put together a coherent and comprehensive answer within seconds, and all of it made sense and was written in perfectly comprehensible language. Content which might have taken me a good half an hour to come up with myself had magically appeared on my screen in a fraction of that time.

And thus it all began…

Reasons to be happy?

So, what benefits does it bring us teachers? I was delighted with my new discovery. 

A wealth of information at my fingertips. Shortcuts that would save me vast amounts of time when planning lessons, workshops, courses and even meetings. It’s not that ChatGPT often gives me something new that I’ve never thought of before, it’s simply the speed with which it does it. If I ask for a lesson outlining 10 ways for teachers to be sustainable in their schools, I’m provided with instant answers. Points for discussion with parents coming to a school meeting? Immediate ideas. 

Life is fast-paced, and many of us teachers have a plethora of tasks that already should have been completed yesterday! What better way to save time and brain energy than use ChatGPT to make our lives easier? Of course, it’s necessary to check that the information you’ve requested is correct, select the bits you need and reformat it so you can use it in your own way, but it still saves a huge chunk of time compared to writing from scratch.

And then the doubts started to creep in. If all of this is so easy and amazing for me, then what about my students?

Reasons to be afraid?

As educators, we always talk about how we want our students to think for themselves, become independent of the teacher and to show creativity. To some extent, ChatGPT removes all of this. Students can do homework in seconds. Instead of thinking how to do things, they simply ask ChatGPT to do it for them. Remember back in the 90s (and earlier), when our teachers told us that we had to learn mental maths because we wouldn’t always be carrying a calculator in our back pocket? Well, now we all have smartphones. In a similar way, we now tell students that they need to figure things out for themselves, neglecting that they have a tool which cuts out the need to think. So are they even learning anything anymore?

And it gets worse. Looking up information is one thing and not that bad if it somehow forces students to find the correct answer and passively learn something new. But the elephant in the room is assignment-writing. Fundamentally, is it ethical for a student to ask ChatGPT to write a whole essay for them? The idea of assignments is for students to put together a body of work that demonstrates their understanding of a particular subject. But if they use ChatGPT, the assignment they produce doesn’t show such knowledge, but rather their ability to find information and use AI tools astutely. What probably annoys us teachers the most is that we don’t always know if a student used AI to write an essay, and it’s even harder to prove that they did.

And this is where we have to change our mindset, get with the programme, some might say.

Embrace ChatGPT as a learning tool

Simply put, I don’t think prohibition is an option. Whether we like it or not, ChatGPT is here to stay and students are inevitably going to use it. So why don’t we embrace it?

Why don’t we teach students how to use ChatGPT effectively and show them how they can use it as an effective learning tool? If there are certain laws of physics they understand, perhaps the fastest way to learn is to ask ChatGPT. If they are stuck for how to analyse a poem, why not ask ChatGPT for some initial ideas about common features of poetry and then apply this to the task at hand? Why not actually use ChatGPT in our classrooms and show students how they can fill gaps in their knowledge? After all, isn’t this student-centred, something the methodologists have been calling for for few decades now? This approach allows students to be more independent and reduces their dependency on the teacher.

But the elephant is still there, impudently snorting away in the corner of the room. What about assessment? How can we prevent students from using ChatGPT to complete assignments? 

Make assignments more AI-proof?

The answer is that we can’t. But what we can do is to try and make assignments more ChatGPT-proof. Here are some suggestions:

• More oral interviews and discussions
• In-class assignments
• Reflective writing i.e. writing about the process of learning
• Creative and analytical assignments, not purely descriptive ones
• Very specific tasks based on your classroom or institutional context

Let’s look at some examples. 

How well could ChatGPT write the following assignment?

Write a 1000-word essay on how tennis players can improve their technical ability.

The answer is 100%. So what can we do? Look at the alternative version:

Watch one of your classmates playing tennis for 15 minutes and make notes on some technical areas they could improve on (500 words). Then give them a 5-point plan on how to improve (500 words).

Granted, ChatGPT is able to make suggestions for technical weaknesses and subsequent improvements, but the students would still have to put these ideas into practice in a real context and cognitively engage with the subject. So, ChatGPT might generate some techniques to look out for, but then the student will have to observe their classmate to see which ones are appropriate. ChatGPT also could make suggestions for improvement, but the student would have to select which ones they think are most relevant for their classmate and find a way of transmitting this information to them.

And there we see how ChatGPT has been embraced but not simply asked to write an essay.

Of course, such assignments take longer to set up, complete and correct, but then could we argue for less assignments of higher quality? Rather than a bunch of easy-to-write and easy-to-mark essays that test the ability to locate knowledge, shouldn’t we push students to apply this knowledge to a real context?

Look at the following assignment titles and consider to what extent ChatGPT would be able to write them:

• Think about an experiment you recently did in the laboratory. Reflect on how well it went. Consider the following: the amount of research you carried out before doing the experiment; how accurately you followed theoretical steps during the experiment; the overall outcome of the experiment; how you can perform the experiment better next time.

• Write a case study about how an independent business in your hometown trains its staff. Analyse how effective their training methods are and then propose ways in which they could train their staff more effectively. 

• Compose a survey based on your classmates’ views on the food offered by the university canteen. Based on the survey results, represent your classmates’ views via visual aids and then make an action plan for the canteen based on these results.
• Analyse 2 Hercule Poirot texts written by Agatha Christie and identify what literary features are common to both of them. Then write a 1500-word short story, employing these literary features, but based in the present day and set in your school.

All of them could involve ChatGPT in the research phase, but they also require an element of thinking from students in order to apply them to a context or make creative use of the information garnered from ChatGPT.

And this is the direction we should be moving in.

Use ChatGPT to help you streamline your lesson planning, and allow students to streamline their learning by using the very same tool! Show students that you’re fully aware of how ChatGPT works and that you’re willing to let them use it, but with the caveat that they also have to think for themselves at some point.

What do you think? Do you still think that ChatGPT ought to be outlawed? Or is it something to be taken advantage of?

Think about the subject you teach and write some ChatGPT-proof assignment titles in the comments! We look forward to reading your ideas!

Written by Paul Finnerty, Erasmus+ Coordinator @ Atlas Language School