Hello everyone, welcome to this week’s Discussion thread!
This week, we’re focusing on using AI in Education. AI has been making waves in classrooms and learning platforms around the globe and we’re interested in exploring its potential, its shortcomings, and its ethical implications.
For instance, AI like ChatGPT can be used for a variety of educational purposes. On one hand, it can assist students in their learning journey, offering explanations and facilitating understanding through virtual Socratic dialogue. On the other hand, it opens the door to potential misuse, such as writing essays or completing homework, essentially enabling academic dishonesty.
Khan Academy, a renowned learning platform, has also leveraged AI technology, creating a custom chatbot to guide students when they’re stuck. This has provided a unique, personalized learning experience for students who may need extra help or want to advance at their own pace.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. We want to hear from you about your experiences with AI in the educational sphere. Have you found an interesting use case for AI in learning? Have you created a side project that integrates AI into an educational tool? What does the future hold for AI in education, in your view?
Looking forward to your contributions!
I forget where I saw it now, but I ran across a story wherein a teacher gave an assignment to get ChatGPT to write an essay on whatever subject the students were learning and then the students were to write an essay on the accuracy and inaccuracy of the ChatGPT essay. I thought that was pretty genius.
The genius move is to get ChatGPT to write the essay and the critique. I don’t even have to try this, to know the output would be better quality than a student’s own critique. From a teaching perspective the worst thing about this is the essay and critique would both be full of subtle errors, and writing feedback about subtle errors takes hours. These hours could have been spent guiding students who did work and actually have subtle misunderstandings.
I don’t think that’s necessarily fair or the point. Usually the point of essays are to get students to think critically about the subject, derive some conclusions and demonstrate evidence to make their points. I think the idea of having students critique an A.I driven essay begins to remove some of the “middle man” of content generation in essay writing, but still gets the student to think about the subject, gather some perspective and ideally look into evidence to support said perspective.
To add that I don’t think the goal is to write “perfect” critiquing feedback that’s free from errors. Errors are also part of the learning process :)