OCEAN COUNTY – As a powerful language model, ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionize schoolwork by providing students with instant access to information, personalized assistance, and innovative learning tools.
While ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for students, there is a risk of over-reliance on technology and a lack of critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
The previous two paragraphs reflected both sides of the ChatGPT coin, but they also had another role in this article. Those two paragraphs were written by ChatGPT itself, when asked how it might affect education in both positive and negative manners.
Released at the end of November, the chatbot created and founded by Sam Altman took the world by storm. By January the web app had reached a total of 100 million users, and according to a UBS study, it currently is the fastest-growing consumer app in history.
Even though ChatGPT seemingly possesses all sorts of useful features, it also raises questions that are directly intertwined with the school system here in the United States.
For example: What can ChatGPT offer to our educational system, and are there any potential positives and negatives that can be encountered?
“There are definitely some potential benefits and some risks with AI,” said Mary Cammarata, the Supervisor for ELA, Social Studies, and Fine & Performing Arts 5-12 from the Barnegat Township School District. “[The] potential benefits include opportunities to save time for both staff and students by creating outlines, and developing distractor answer choices for multiple-choice questions… while risks include students relying on technology to fully write responses and no longer using their critical thinking skills.”
Jim Barbiere, the Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Human Responses at the Barnegat Township School District, believes that this enormously powerful tool can have staggering potential effects. Though, he adds that just like any other tool, this one will be as effective as the user’s ability to wield it.
“For instance, an AI bot could be used to undermine the student’s writing process if students use the tool to cheat and write their essays for them,” said Barbiere. “Alternatively, it could be used to strengthen the student’s writing process by offering different perspectives or providing text [for students] to then edit and revise themselves.”
Barbiere also believes that ChatGPT has a number of great uses that can be acquired by skilled teachers. He considers that the AI Bot can serve as a tool that can rapidly gather background information on certain topics. Furthermore, he says that teachers can prompt the AI to provide material for a variety of different levels, to differentiate instruction and meet the needs of all students.
“With AI, teachers are only limited by the constraints of their pedagogy and imagination,” said Barbiere.
Critics have said that there should be rules regarding using ChatGPT in schools.
According to Barbiere, technology outpaces the ability to legislate it, so in order to give a better explanation, he chose to use the music industry as an example.
“In the 1980s sampling technology got ahead of copyright law so artists were able to sample copyrighted music for free until laws were written to prevent that,” said Barbiere. “So the lesson is [that] we don’t yet know what rules should be implemented regarding AI, other than the basic ground rules of not using it to cause harm… only after a new technology has become prevalent, only then will its full implication be understood.”
When it comes to a potential ban on the AI Bot in school systems, Cammarata believes that this is an uphill battle. She said that students should learn that this is a useful tool, and that teachers should carry the responsibility to ensure their students understand what it means to be ethical in regard to anything they submit.
As for some of the changes that ChatGPT can cause in the future for educational systems, Cammarata foresees that there will be a shift in the thinking about the type of writing assigned to students. She says that she has told her teachers to stop giving “Google-able” type assignments.
“The field of Social Studies has changed the most in some ways because now students can look up any information they want on their phones or Chromebooks,” said Cammarata. “Now students should learn to be practicing historians.”
She ties in her observations with a quote from “What Is Learned in College History Classes?” by Sam Wineburg, Mark Smith, and Joel Breakstone: “The study of history should be a mind-altering encounter that leaves one forever unable to consider the social world without asking questions about where a claim comes from, who is making it, and how time and place shape human behavior.”
