If you do not know by now, ChatGPT has the whole educational system across the world in a state of uproar. I have listened to so many seminars on ChatGPT in tertiary education and about how the whole system of assessment is busy changing. I am giving classes to university students in philosophy and the declaration that they need to sign that they admit they did not plagiarize now explicitly states that they did not use AI language processing models. Also busy with my own research and publications, ChatGPT poses various ethical questions: can you use it as a language editor, can you use it to generate new ideas and concepts, can you cross-check different sources, and so on.
But what is increasingly apparent is that a great divide is being created in the university and other educational systems: one half sees the potential of AI models such as ChatGPT to enhance education and learning, and the other half sees it as the end of education as they knew it and every student will begin to cheat.
And the funny thing is, only one student in my class knew about ChatGPT.
But putting that to the side, I find myself on the side that sees ChatGPT as an immensely valuable tool in education. In this post, I want to briefly mention only a handful of ideas that I have gathered since using ChatGPT and how it can enhance learning in tertiary educational systems. By not seeing it like this, I claim, educators are missing out on immensely powerful technology and opportunities to foster an environment of learning. As I will discuss below, ChatGPT can help the educator by being a peer (akin to peer reviewing), ChatGPT can be a collaborator in creating new links and ideas, and it can again help us to refocus on assessing the process of learning rather than the end product of learning. I hope you will read on and give your opinion on the situation!
ChatGPT has access to more resources than we do. Or in other words, it can access them more efficiently. I ran a couple of prompts in my field of research and it gave me answers that surprised me. The depth of "understanding" that it showed in my very niche field was on the one hand scary, but on the other hand eye-opening:
ChatGPT can become a peer.
You can upload a piece of writing and ask it what it thinks, or you can write a prompt about some field, e.g., philosophy, and it will provide a very satisfactory answer. I wrote a prompt of a potential answer to a question I posed to students and I asked to assess it. It did, according to me, a very good job. I gave it some lecturing notes and I asked it to formulate a question. It gave me a very interesting question, one I did not think of myself. Viewing the technology as inherently dangerous will cut you off from this potentially useful peer.
Linking to the above, ChatGPT can become a valuable collaborative partner. A unique feature of it is that you can upload as a prompt a full essay. You can then ask it to generate a rubric of how it would have marked the essay. You can then distribute that to students so that they can mark each other's essays and give feedback. You can then use the peer-student-reviewed essay and the feedback given by students as new prompts to hear what ChatGPT has to say about how the student dealt with the question.
The main thing is that ChatGPT is a tool and not something else. It can enhance your own teaching. It can be a collaborator in the assessment. Sometimes you just need that extra boost of confidence you get from a peer, ChatGPT can, in a very limited sense, provide this. (There are obvious drawbacks and dangers in using a service like this. It is all about discretion: the educator is after all educated and in possession of multiple degrees. They are not uneducated impressionable figures who might be manipulated by, e.g., ChatGPT.)
A catchphrase of sorts is beginning to emerge in the academy regarding ChatGPT and assessment:
It is not about the end product but the process of learning.
Universities pushing ever greater numbers through the classes so that they can make more money have a very bad result: classes are too full to assess students properly. So education has become a "sausage maker". Get as much through as smoothly as possible. This is highly problematic because you cannot assess so many students to see if learning has taken place.
I think ChatGPT is helping us actually see this flaw better. Or in other words, it is gaining the attention of the right people. Educators have for long been saying that the current model is flawed, but now the people are listening. Why will a student cheat? The readings are probably boring, the curriculum outdated, the discussion not relevant to the student's situation, and so on. Why will the student want to use ChatGPT to cheat? Because the work was not engaging and they wanted to get it over with. This is not learning, this is not getting students to engage with the literature and contemporary problems.
It is beating a dead horse and then blaming students for cheating.
Students want to learn, students want to be creative. But a creative mind dies within rigid borders. Some people like rigid borders, but creative minds need freedom, creative minds need open spaces that they can then fill.
The current education system with its rigid borders and very paternalistic outlooks hinder learning. If those who are currently antagonistic to AI language models win, a remarkable opportunity of collaborative learning will cease to exist. Outmoded systems will be reintroduced and a very uncritical "sameness" will be reproduced.
What is your opinion of ChatGPT, especially in the education space?
The musings are my own. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300. I hope you are well!
