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ChatGPT is a new, free to use online AI application that has many teachers concerned, as they feel it may make cheating almost impossible to catch. Other teachers are more excited about the opportunities it might bring for teaching, but even the most optimistic teacher is not quite sure how to handle ChatGPT in school as a teacher.
With a simple prompt like “Can you write me a five paragraph essay on ____?” the app can write entire essays with almost no mistakes, a natural tone, and even references from books and other well known sources. If a teacher were to try and put the essays generated from this AI into Turnitin or other popular plagiarism checkers, it would come back with no concerns.
However, other teachers see ChatGPT as a technological revolution that children need to be taught how to handle appropriately. ChatGPT can help to spark ideas, correct student work for them to notice their errors faster, and even act as a tutor for concepts they are struggling to understand.
Many in higher education are discussing the technology and updating their policies to ensure it is used appropriately and everyone has a clear definition of what constitutes academic dishonesty. Other’s are focusing on highlighting the huge number of limitations the technology still has and attempting to keep people from viewing the new technology with rose-tinted glasses.
Regardless of whether a teacher views ChatGPT in school as a good or bad thing, it will absolutely have a major impact on their jobs and how they need to run classes. This article will suggest how teachers can best handle ChatGPT in school as a teacher based on professional dialogue on the topic and give practical ideas for including it in the curriculum to teach students what is appropriate use of the technology and what is cheating.
This article will not include any example text from ChatGPT as tools are being developed to recognize and target these forms of writing and punish websites that use them. Additionally, it is better for each teacher themselves to go onto the program directly, using this link, and ask questions relevant to the subject and grade level they teach.
As teachers read through this guide on ChatGPT in school, they should test out various examples to see the responses they receive and consider how it might impact their specific class. The AI understands completely natural speech, so feel free to message it just as you would a friend or family member.
How to Deal with ChatGPT and Plagiarism.
Google search results show that some of the most searched terms related to ChatGPT are “Is using ChatGPT cheating” and “Is ChatGPT allowed for school?”. While some teachers may be quick to suggest that the answer is yes, the real answer is more nuanced.
Obviously, if a student asks ChatGPT to write them an essay and they turn in that essay, this would be considered cheating. Teachers will need to keep a much more careful eye on student writing, especially if they continue to assign take-home essays.
However, a few simple tricks can ensure that students can not use ChatGPT for cheating. If teachers employ the tips below, they can stop worrying about ChatGPT being used for students to cheat and focus on the positive aspects it can bring to students’ educations.
- Assign In-Class Essays
One of the first and easiest ways to ensure students are not using AI applications like ChatGPT to write their essays is to only assign in-class essays. If the students are hand writing an essay that the teacher is watching them write, there is absolutely no way they can be using ChatGPT.
This approach has many benefits as it completely removes the need for the teacher to worry about any other tips as the risk of students using ChatGPT is basically zero. Additionally, this frees up a lot of student time in the evenings to do other homework or just be a kid again.
In-class essays are probably the simplest solution that will remove a lot of worry from teachers and stress from students. Giving students a strict time limit for writing essays also helps perfectionists to not panic all night over their essay and prevents procrastinators from pushing projects they should have spent a week on into a single night of word vomit.
While this does remove the worry of AI help, it also lowers the possible complexity of tasks, as students need to be able to complete the essay in a single class period without any online tools or supports. So in-class essays can be a nice baseline, but teachers will need to implement other ideas for more complex projects that students need to be able to take home.
- Require Connections to Current Events
The current iteration of ChatGPT is only trained using data from 2021 and before. Because of this, teachers who want to ensure their students are not able to cheat can simply require their students to connect whatever they are learning to something that has happened recently.
If a student tries to use ChatGPT in school for this type of assignment, it will give wrong information. For example, asking ChatGPT who the prime minister of New Zealand is will give the outdated answer of Jacina Ardern.
This will make it extremely obvious who has attempted to cheat and who is actually doing research on current events. This is in addition to teachers’ natural ability to recognize what their students’ writing looks like.
Teachers may worry that students will have ChatGPT write part of their essays and simply add in bits about the current event, but in almost all cases it will be extremely obvious which is the highly polished AI writing and what is the students normal writing.
If the student is struggling enough in class to try and cheat, they probably are not writing at the pristine level of vocabulary and grammar of an AI. So even having a portion of the assignment require some reference to a current event or personal experience will guarantee that the teacher has a portion to compare for plagiarism.
- Have Students Present Their Essays
Another easy way to check whether students have cheated is to test their understanding in multiple ways. After having students write an essay on a topic, the teacher can then have the students give a brief presentation on their essay.
If the student’s essay looks like college level work while their presentation sounds like they have not even read the SparkNotes, then that is a pretty obvious signal for the teacher to have a chat with their student. In addition to the benefit of preventing cheating, this approach also allows for students with different skill sets to show their understanding better.
Some students struggle to express themselves when they write and they may be tempted to cheat to prevent totally failing the assignment due to their lack of confidence in their writing. If the students understand, however, that they will have a chance to talk through their understanding of their essay verbally, less pressure is put on the writing.
Telling students that they will write and speak about a topic will show them that they should not even attempt to use AI as they will just get caught. However, it will also show them that they do not need to be worried they will totally fail if their writing is poor as their presentation grade can help to balance out their lower writing score.
What are the Beneficial Uses of ChatGPT in School?
The tips above include many beneficial approaches for students, but are mainly focused on avoiding the negative aspects of ChatGPT when writing essays. However, there are also many ways to use ChatGPT in school that are not cheating at all and can even help students to learn better.
- ChatGPT is great for sparking ideas.
While a student should not be writing entire essays on ChatGPT in school, it can be an amazing place to bounce ideas off of. For example, students can give ChatGPT prompts that will help them brainstorm ideas such as:
“I’m writing an essay on The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Can you give me some themes I could write about?”
“I have a report for my social studies class on the main differences between socialism and capitalism. What are some good example countries I could talk about?”
“I have an art project to do that requires me to blend two artistic styles together. Can you give me a list of styles that I could consider blending?”
These prompts produce rich responses from ChatGPT that students can use to get ideas to dive deeper into. ChatGPT does a very good job of giving students a variety of examples and ideas that cover multiple perspectives and often yields unconventional and interesting ideas that students might not have considered including in their work.
Not only does ChatGPT give the students suggestions, but it also explains the reasons that it chose those specific examples and ways that students might use the idea in their work. This does not do the work for the students, but gives them some interesting ideas to help them get off the ground with an idea that inspires and excites them to write or talk about.
- ChatGPT can show students their mistakes.
Another way that ChatGPT can help students with their work is to have them check it. Students can input their work along with the prompts they were given and ask ChatGPT to give them feedback.
As surprising as it may be, ChatGPT can actually give students some pretty incredible feedback. Not only can it help them with their grammar and spelling similarly to tools like Grammarly, but it can also help them find inaccuracies in their information.
Students can ask whether their definitions are accurate, their short answer responses are thorough enough, or if their essays are structured well.
While not everything the AI suggests will be perfect, it often has a better grasp of concrete concepts and data than most students and so can help them avoid simple errors. Teachers should input examples of their students’ work and see what suggestions ChatGPT gives to improve the work and see how often they agree with the suggestions.
- ChatGPT tutors pretty well.
ChatGPT is not just able to correct work like a teacher, but it can also help explain topics that students are struggling to grasp. Using a conversational style, students can ask ChatGPT to give them explanations, make those explanations simpler or more appropriate for their grade level, and give them example problems and questions to test their understanding.
Because of the conversational nature of ChatGPT, it will often be far more helpful than Google Search at helping students to understand high level concepts. Because students can tailor the prompts they give to their needs, explanations are not reliant on someone else asking the same question online already with an explanation that makes sense for their brain.
Students can start by asking for a simple explanation of whatever idea they are struggling with. From there, they can ask what certain words in the definition mean, or they can simply ask for the explanation to be rewritten in a different way.
In addition to that, ChatGPT will often understand prompts even if they have errors in grammar or spelling. For example, a student learning the English language could ask ChatGPT “What is genwine mean?” and despite the incorrect grammar and spelling, ChatGPT will give them a correct definition for the word genuine.
What makes ChatGPT so powerful however, is that if this student does not understand the definition given, they can respond with “Sorry ChatGPT, I am learning English and am A2 level. Can you say it easy for me?” and the system will produce a significantly simplified version of the definition it gave above.
Because ChatGPT is so conversational, individualized, and tolerant of errors. It is far more helpful to students than simply Googling all of their problems. While it will never surpass the accuracy and professional knowledge of a teacher in helping students to improve themselves and learn, ChatGPT is still an amazing tool for students to be able to use to independently learn when the teacher is unavailable.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while ChatGPT absolutely will require teachers to change the way they assess their students, it also has many benefits that will change how students can gain information and spark new ideas.
ChatGPT may be a new technology, but there are already many teachers and other experts coming up with fantastic new ways to utilize it. The more teachers and students can use the technology, the more discoveries will be made
On top of this, this is only the first version of ChatGPT to be released and it will surely be updated, connected with traditional search engines and given capabilities to analyze images probably as well. Only time will tell, but it is every teacher’s responsibility to keep up with this new trend to avoid the pitfalls and capitalize on the benefits.
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References
Biswas, Som. “Chatgpt and the Future of Medical Writing.” Radiology, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1148/radiol.223312.
Eaton, S. E., Brennan, R., Wiens, J., & McDermott, B. (2023, January 25). Artificial intelligence and academic integrity: The ethics of teaching and learning with algorithmic writing technologies. https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/115769
Pickell, Travis Ryan and Doak, Brian R., “Five Ideas for How Professors Can Deal with GPT-3 … For Now” (2023). Faculty Publications – George Fox School of Theology. 432. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ccs/432
