AI chatbots. Maybe not the end of the world.
Okay . . . so I’m guessing you’ve heard about how AI chatbots are going to take over the world, ruin education, steal your kid’s Halloween candy, and kick your dog. I’m not entirely sure about the taking over the world, stealing candy, and kicking your dog part but am feeling pretty comfortable saying that ChatGPT is not going to ruin education.
Yes, I’ve been wrong before. So the ruined education piece could happen, I suppose. But I’m pretty sure that an artificial intelligence chatbot like ChatGPT isn’t going to be the thing that does it. And I’m starting to believe that it might actually help us do our jobs better.
For those of you just catching up, artificial intelligence software rolled out late last fall and is designed to mimic the thinking and writing of actual people. The concern is that students will use AI chatbots to create products in response to classroom assignments and submit those products as their own work. Could this happen? Absolutely. Has this sort of thing been going on for years? Also absolutely.
Back in the day, pre-internet, students could and did order entire catalogs that listed hundreds of pre-written history papers available in a variety of lengths and quality. Post internet? Those catalogs and essays simply went online. And now? AI is simply the next step in the decades-old Cold War between student and teacher.
Some of you haven’t been around long enough to remember the heated discussions and hand-wringing that happened in the math world when pocket calculators became readily available. The current conversation around ChatGPT ruining the educational process has a similar feel to it.
I get it. We want the actual kid, not a chatbot, to prove what they know and are able to do. And wouldn’t it be nice to find a tool that can save us time, create teaching materials, and maybe even help us score student work? The more I use AI and uncover how others are using it, the more I’m convinced that teachers can and should find ways to incorporate AI into their classrooms.
So. What can that look that look like in practice?
First thing first.
You’re freaking out a bit about a kid who you think turned in work created by a chatbot like ChatGPT. Your immediate steps shouldn’t be a whole different than if you suspect a student has plagiarised any other assignment.
Be sure you and your building have a clear academic policy in place. Plagiarism is still plagiarism and your expectations around academic honesty are still in place. We know that when you have a clear policy and make kids aware of the policy, plagiarism happens less often. (Don’t have an Academic Honesty and Expectations policy? You’re super late to the party. You might start here.)
The next step to detecting whether a chatbot wrote something is to simply ask the chatbot itself.
Recently an author used ChatGPT to write the first paragraph of an article titled “ChatGPT: The Enemy of Academic Integrity?” I grabbed the first paragraph, went to ChatGPT, and asked:
The software churned for about a second and spit this back out:
Many of you are using plagiarism software such as TurnItIn. Stick with that. TurnItIn is claiming that it has software in place to counter tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard.
The company that created ChatGPT has developed a tool for detecting whether ChatGPT was used to create a product. Yes, it is ironic. But who better to write detection software to catch AI generated text than the people who wrote the chatbot code in the first place?
Get their AI Text Classifier tool.
There will be more and more detection tools becoming available but two others you might try are:
Are these tools any good? I asked ChatGPT to create an article in the style of Frederick Douglas and posted its response to detection software. All caught the article as being created by AI. But like all things AI, your results may vary. (Some are saying the detection tools can be just as flaky as the chatbots themselves.)
Of course, long-term steps to counter tools like ChatGPT involve us examining our instructional and assessment practices. A couple of years ago, edtech superstar Marco Torres, asked a large room of social studies teachers:
If your kids can Google the answers to the questions on your homework and tests, what do they need you for?
Replace “Google” with “ChatGPT” and the question still works. Our kids need value-added classrooms, classrooms where we help them develop the skills needed to make the world a better place. That means we need to go beyond traditional sit and get instruction.
I especially like this bit from Clive Thompson’s book Smarter Than You Think:
“How should we respond when there are powerful new tools for finding answers? Think of different questions.”
If our classrooms are still centered on rote memorization and low-level thinking skills, software like ChatGPT is exactly the response many students will take. Our task is to train student to become critical readers, critical thinkers, and critical creators. We should be asking our kids to dig into historical resources and evidence to create new products and connect past with present. To solve authentic scientific problems. To connect literary themes and characters with contemporary issues and to think creatively about ways to address those issues. To imagine all sorts of ways of using math beyond being able to recognize the difference between sine and cosine.
Using strategies, activities, and assessments focused more on inquiry-based learning can help discourage plagiarism of all kinds while helping our students become engaged and knowledgeable citizens. A social studies teacher buddy used to ask his students to:
“Write 5 paragraphs highlighting the main causes of the Great Depression.”
This spring? He was getting a lot of this:
“The Great Depression, one of the most significant economic downturns in modern history, was a complex event with multiple interrelated causes. Its profound impact on the global economy, lasting from the late 1920s to the early 1940s, has led scholars to analyze various factors that contributed to its onset. This essay aims to provide a succinct overview of the key causes behind the Great Depression.”
Hmm . . . so he went to one of the AI detection sites we mentioned earlier and got similar responses to I got when I tried detecting copies.
He began to realize that he needed to edit his question:
“Instead of asking students to simply summarize Great Depression causes, I ask them to rank and defend their ranking using evidence with direct quotes and citations from our primary sources. I also now require students to use examples from our whole class discussion and their small group interactions.”
When he experimented a bit with what ChatGPT would do with that sort of prompt, the bot came back with this:
So what are a few ways for using AI in our instructional designs?
Start by reading these articles that highlight ways teachers can use AI.
Get some ideas on writing AI prompts. Seriously . . . this is one of the next literacy skills you and your students need to develop. So. Many. Ways to tell AI what to do.
One of the quickest ways for using ChatGPT is to encourage students to use AI to find basic, textbook-style information online instead of getting lost in the research process. This also provides a great opportunity to teach media literacy and corroboration questioning skills.
Ask ChatGPT to create a list of inaccuracies or myths around a topic and have students use primary sources to prove the myths incorrect.
Robert W. Maloy and Torrey Trust created a student choice board focused on Black History Month that is a great example of asking students to think critically around prompts and products created by ChatGPT.
Use ChatGPT to create writing and discussion prompts:
Ask ChatGPT to rewrite primary sources, literature text, or online articles to specific Lexile levels, making them more accessible to your students:
Ultimately all tech tools, ChatGPT included, are just tools. We can use them as hammers to break out a bunch of windows or to build beautiful cathedrals. AI is a tool. It’s not going to replace educators. But we need to realize that it will encourage us to rethink how we do our jobs.
Do we see teaching as simply presenting information that students will memorize, summarize, and forget? Or is it our job to find ways of empowering our kids to think critically and creatively? Your students have already started using ChatGPT. How we choose to use it is up to us.
Looking for some more resources and tools?
Head over to our Basic AI Stuff page for more resources, ideas, and tools