ChatGPT: Friend or Foe?
The Skyline asked ChatGPT to write a news story about ChatGPT and the effect that it will have on education and plagiarisim. ChatGPT was also provided with the same quotes that were used in the Skyline’s story below. This is the “news story” that ChatGPT wrote.
By Brooke Manuel, Skyline Editor
ALPINE – Despite reports of ChatGPT threatening education as we know it, educators shouldn’t enter panic mode just yet. Although the chatbot can give answers to questions and prompts instantaneously, it so far lacks the luster and novelty that only a human can provide.
Since the launch of ChatGPT, a new chatbot that can answer questions and prompts, and even write essays, in Nov. 2022, the internet has been flooded with opinions on what this new artificial intelligence software will do to education and the workplace.
Some educators have tried to use the software as a teaching tool, while others are worried about what this new software means for education and plagiarism.
“There’s never been anything like this before,” said Rosemary Briseño, an English professor at Sul Ross State University. “This kind of technology is just in its infancy. We don’t know exactly what the long-term ramifications of it are going to be, but it’s already causing major ripples in the water.”
“So, I debated since December whether or not I wanted to tell my students about this,” said Briseño.
Briseño compared the decision of whether to approach the topic of ChatGPT with her students to the debate over sex education in high schools, in which opponents of sex education argue that introducing the topic to students will pique their interest and encourage them to explore. After deep consideration, Briseño decided that she would bring the new chatbot into the classroom.
“I thought ‘well it’s not going to go away; it’s only going to get bigger. Sooner or later, everybody is going to know about this.’ So, it’s not a matter of whether or not I introduce it, they’re going to find out,” she said. “So, what I did was, instead of hiding from it, I decided to embrace it.”
Briseño developed a lesson using ChatGPT in which she and her students analyze a work written by ChatGPT against Bloom’s Taxonomy, the hierarchy of critical thinking, which is something that she says the chatbot is incapable of at this point in time. This lesson showcases the limitations of the chatbot and thus, one of the many ways that artificial intelligence cannot yet compete with human intelligence.
From her personal research, Briseño also noticed that ChatGPT lacks rhetorical voice and often gets the facts wrong.
Briseño concluded that she will use the chatbot to show students what not to do in their writing.
Many other educators across the United States have also brought the software into the classroom and used it as a tool to teach their students about the inner workings of writing and the importance of well-developed arguments and explanations in their writing assignments.
One high school English teacher in Oregon, Kelly Gibson, has developed and executed some interesting lesson plans incorporating the chatbot to help students improve their writing skills.
Gibson asked her students to write a thesis statement and a specified request for ChatGPT to write an essay centered around their thesis statement. Gibson then used the chatbot to generate these essays for her students and required them to deconstruct the essays using a detailed graphic organizer.
Another part of the lesson plan required the students to take one paragraph of their essay and improve it, either on their own or with the chatbot. Gibson said that students were challenged because they had to figure out what needed improvement before beginning the editing process.
After the lesson, the consensus among her students was that their voices were not guiding the essay. Gibson explained that prior to this lesson her students had such a hard time understanding voice, but after the exercise, they had a much better understanding of what exactly a writer’s voice means to writing.
These are only two examples of how educators are struggling to keep up with technological advances in education.
ChatGPT’s adaptive skills, the ability to learn and expand its functionality, is a more nuanced concern of educators, and could portend a time in the future when machine-learning exceeds the skills of humans. Plagiarism is a more practical worry among educators.
Briseño urges her colleagues to teach their students the importance of academic integrity. She explains that academic integrity goes beyond plagiarism and knowing when and how to cite a source, and means taking pride in your own work.
Briseño and Julie Vega, another SRSU English professor, hope to shed light on ChatGPT at Sul Ross State University in the future.
“Professors are on the lookout. We are aware that this exists. And there are very subtle, discrete methods of discovery when it comes to AI,” Briseno said.