AI Time: Blow Up the Old and Ring in the New

It’s time to blow up the old ways teaching and embrace the new world of ChatGPT and other AI tools in the classroom. It’s what the students are doing anyway, it’s what the new marketplace will demand, and it will engender a needed reboot of our approach to education.?

Since ChatGPT dropped last November, students have been using it to do their schoolwork. They’re all using it and they’re using it all the time. They’re using it even though they know they’re missing out on some actual learning because the American education system has incentivized good grades, rote requirements, and over-reliance on The Paper as the ultimate assignment. They’re smart enough to know how to give us what we want and they’re clever enough to have already figured out how to use ChatGPT to do that.

The New York Times podcast The Daily [1] recently spoke to high school and college students about ChatGPT. While acknowledging that there is something “cool” about learning, they assert that that’s not what they’re in school for. They’re in school to make good grades and fulfill requirements. And ChatGPT makes that happen.

Speaker 1

It was a Brazilian studies class. Like, I’ve got to take a history class to fulfill a requirement. It’s not something I’m really interested in. It’s cool to learn about Brazil. But at the end of the day, I’m just trying to pass the course.

Stella Tan

You don’t feel like you kind of cheated yourself out of learning by using ChatGPT in these ways?

Speaker 1

I didn’t really feel that bad about it, to be honest. If GPA is everything, then students are only going to care about grades. And GPA is pretty much everything.

Your internship applications, your job applications, they literally have all these GPA requirements. So I feel like that emphasis on grading and GPA, that pushes students to use whatever means that they can.

Speaker 2

College, we pay hella money, right? We’re just trying to get a degree, that’s it. Credentials. Just like, I’m stressed I really need to get this degree so I can get a job so I can survive. Oh, man, oh! So when that’s your mindset, then it’s really hard to be like, oh, no, let’s learn everybody. Yeah!

Blow Up the Old

Just as the pandemic upended our educational system overnight, turning us all into online educators, AI will – must – upend our curricular design, learning objectives, and grading system. And fast.

It’s high time educators reevaluate what we’re trying to teach and how we teach it. It’s so easy to just assign a paper and have it be the catchall for everything that we’ve fallen into The Paper rut. Want to teach argument? Assign a paper. Want to teach organization? Assign a paper. Want to teach critical thinking? Assign a paper. Want to teach research? Data analysis? Assign a paper.

Consider the typical rubric. Like a Swiss Army Knife, it’s got everything. Points for choice of topic, depth of research, structure and organization, writing style, grammar, spelling, format, and layout. And are we really teaching all those things well in one assignment?

Using ChatGPT ensures that the papers your students submit will merit top scores in all those categories at once. That will force us to break down our assignments, choose what to focus on, and design exercises and assignments that address our focus in creative new ways.

I envision lots of in-class peer review, oral presentations with critiques, pairing students up in class to work out issues. And I also envision more physical work: writing out and arranging note cards, underlining crucial passages in a text, presenting orally, sketching out arguments. And then using ChatGPT to pull our work together.

Teach what you mean to teach. Grade what you mean to grade. Incentivize what you mean to incentivize.

?Students are not in school to learn; they’re in school to earn a good GPA. That’s what we’ve incentivized. You need a good GPA to get into grad school, to get a good job, to make money, and to get the tools to make the world a better place.

If ChatGPT will get them that GPW, they’re going to use it. They’d be silly not to.

GPT detectors? Warnings from professors? Useless.

Students have quickly learned to game the detectors. They’ve mastered the prompt, which is the instruction to ChatGPT. They’ve learned to prompt ChatGPT to write essays using different length sentences and paragraphs, to include two or three typos or grammatical errors (for authenticity), and to write in their voices.

Speaker 1

So I was going to write about a criminal justice system. And as the deadline encroached on me, I was like, yeah, I’m not really finishing this. So I started having a conversation with ChatGPT where I was like, OK, I want you to write 500 words talking about this topic.

And it did it. I read through it. And I was like, OK, this is good work, but it doesn’t really sound like me. So then I gave ChatGPT — I was like, I’m going to give you something that I’ve already written. And I want you to rewrite this paragraph to make it sound like me.

Stella Tan

Wow.

Speaker 1

So I copy/pasted the page of what I’d already written. And then it rewrote that paragraph. And I was like, OK, this works. And then I pasted those sections into my final paper.

Speaker 2

And I reworded a little bit to make it sound like less robotic. And then I’m like, beep, beep, boop, boop, turn it in. Submit. 10 out of 10. Good job. Nice work. Well, thank you.

Creative, innovative, clever, right? This is exactly what we want from our students and it is exactly what employers will want to hire. So let’s nurtures that creativity, innovation, and cleverness.?

Ring in the New

Students are not going to stop using ChatGPT. We can’t run from the technology and we can’t change the world. As long as we keep incentivizing grades, GPAs, and robotically perfect final products, they’ll keep using ChatGPT to achieve what we demand of them and what we reward.

We need to identify what we’re trying to achieve with our assignments and focus on how to teach and assess those things in creative ways that don’t always include writing an essay, memo, paper, or discussion post.

?If you want your students to form an argument, try having them describe and defend the argument live in class while their peers attack and critique it.

If you want students to organize their thoughts, research, and data into a coherent flow, have them write each element on a 3x5 notecard and arrange the notecards physically in class to reflect that flow.?

Embrace this incredibly powerful and useful new tool

It’s an exciting new world and if we acknowledge and embrace it, we and our students can learn and grow in ways we never imagined.

Incorporate AI into your assignments. Teach your students to use it but more importantly: let them explore it and teach themselves and you how to use it. These digital natives in our classrooms have never been afraid of new technology and they’re certainly not afraid of this one. They’ve already shown creativity and vigor in using AI.

Let’s all get better at what we do by allowing our students to use AI in a controlled environment and then share their findings with the class – and us.

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[1] The Daily, June 28, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/podcasts/the-daily/ai-chat-gpt-schools.html