What is ChatGTP?
If you have been listening to the news or the internet recently, you will have heard of ChatGTP which was released at the end of 2022. ChatGTP stands for chat generative pre-trained transformer and it is basically an artificially intelligent chatbot: it answers your questions, writes fairytales, mimics human speech and seems to be able to have a creativity which we haven’t seen available for free for the general public. There are, of course, much better explanations available online for what exactly ChatGTP is, but for our purposes, I want to consider the impact of ChatGTP in our classrooms. Should teachers be worried about the impact of artificial intelligence? What can we do about it?
How might ChatGTP impact teachers?
There are three main ways in which we might feel anxious about the impact of artificial intelligence, and I want to explore these in this post. The first is the fear that schools and students have no need for teachers any more. Can teachers be replaced by computers? After all, plenty of information is available to students without the need for a paid adult in the room. Is this the beginning of the end of the teaching profession? I imagine that similar fears were felt by teachers in the 1990s when the internet began to invade classrooms. I wonder if similar fears were felt when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1436. After all, if students have access to a book of their own, surely they don’t need another person to explain it to them. I am being facetious of course, but this is not the first time the landscape has changed. Perhaps there’s no need to panic yet.
The second fear is that students might be misled by false, misleading or unreliable information. In a world of fake news and dodgy sources, students can easily be taken in by the confident voice of a robot, but is it reliable?
The third fear is that students have access to a resource that can instantly do their homework for them. The plagiarism opportunities are endless, and I think this is my real fear. Keep reading to see my experiment into ChatGTP’s ability to write creatively on demand for a range of purposes and audiences.
Ok, before I begin to spiral, let’s stop and think rationally about these three main fears. Are teachers going to be replaced by AI? Are students going to be misled? And are students going to cheat?
1. Are teachers going to be replaced by ChatGTP?
In short, my answer here is NO!
Remember Covid-19? Students were sent home from school in the UK in March 2020 and most schools remained closed for the remainder of the academic year. A second national lockdown and period of school closure happened in the winter at the start of 2021. There existed the misconception that if students had access to the internet and a little bit of guidance from teachers, that they could teach and guide themselves. Their parents can teach and guide them. Their teachers can be effective a remote teachers, checking in with students via Google Classroom, MS Teams or Zoom. The damage of closing schools has been deep and far reaching, and I don’t think we can fully grasp the extent of the damage that was done yet, although much research has been done.
Since the mid-1990s, the internet has had a place in schools, whether via one standalone PC in the school library in 1996 or via an iPad in the hand of every child in the school. Information is available at the touch of a button, but you as a teacher are much more than a walking, talking Google. You don’t just spew information at your students. You design learning, question and promote investigation. You differentiate, prompt and drip feed. You challenge, intrigue and all the other verbs that make you a teacher and not simply an encyclopaedia.
And those words only relate to your ability to promote the teaching and learning of information: what about your pastoral role? Let’s be honest: much of the day is spent promoting the well being of the whole pupil. I think back on last week, to the panic attacks, the student with no lunch and the bullying concern. The exam-overwhelm, the parent phone calls and the form tutor emails relating to no homework completed. The attendance statistics I followed up, the pens I leant, and the many other things I tried to squeeze in, in between teaching English! Teachers are an invaluable resource. You cannot be replaced by a bot, no matter how much that bot also knows about your subject.
So what action should teachers take?
My advice is to do nothing! Well, nothing more or less than you were already doing before! As I said above, you are invaluable to your school and your students. They cannot do without you, as recent history has shown. Continue to prepare great lessons, support your students academically and pastorally and be confident that your role is secure.
2. Are students going to be misled by false, misleading or unreliable information?
In short, perhaps.
But being misled by unreliable information is not limited to ChatGTP or AI. As teachers, we have been dealing with fake news more and more, particularly in the last five to ten years. Social media, click-bait news and video content has transformed the way in which we consume information, and I think it has also ebbed away the standard of journalism and information we see. Or perhaps the sheer amount of information out there means that the likelihood of consuming unreliable information has increased.
Students are vulnerable to this, to be sure. Many people have experimented with ChatGTP to assess its accuracy and have written about it, for example, this article or this one.
ChatGTP works by using key words from the question it has been asked, finding information and adapting that information to a ‘best guess’ style answer. It is intelligent in its ability to transform information, however it is not always right. Neither are our students. They can also be misled by standard internet articles or even by big and well known websites like Wikipedia, which can be edited by users. The danger is that CHatGTP is reliable to a certain extend; especially with closed questions and factual information, more often than not it is right. And it answers confidently, meaning that we are more likely to trust it.
What action should teachers take?
Teach your students how to assess the reliability of their sources. To be honest, this is great practice regardless of the new danger of ChatGTP. English and Media teachers should be teaching students to spot fake news, to look at the website, the journalist, the evidence quoted, the intention of the writer, etc, etc.
Review and assess information collected from students. Again, this is nothing new. If you ask students to research a topic, you are going to review their findings and correct any misconceptions. This is the job of the teacher! ChatGTP hasn’t really changed anything.
As with the first concern above, being a good teacher is enough to combat the fear of AI.
3. Are students going to cheat more easily?
Hmmm… well this one doesn’t have a short answer. My first instinct is that some students will cheat, regardless of how. And some students will not cheat, no matter what resources are available to them. This is the way of the world.
I remember being absolutely fascinated by the power of the internet when I was in early secondary school. In 1997/98, I was in Year 10 so about 14 years old, and my school library had a row of 4 or 5 computers with internet access. I quickly discovered MSN chatrooms and couldn’t believe how I could chat with someone across the globe. (nearly 40 year old me shudders at the lack of control and understanding in the 1990s!) Information at our fingertips! You could Ask Jeeves or use Yahoo (yes, Yahoo!) to find the answers to your questions, and a quick as sticks, you could answer all those tricky Geography or History questions without having to open a book or think for yourself.
Listen, cheating is much older than the internet. So what is the difference with ChatGTP? Why does it pose more of a plagiarism risk? In my subject, cheating has never really been my main concern. Most of the time, English tasks are a much more creative and self-expressive form than a fact-based subject. The answer is not always available on Google – a quick definition of a simile doesn’t equate to writing an effective simile in the middle of a creative piece of writing. Understanding and skill development is what is being assessed.
ChatGTP is a new danger though, as it can apply some ‘creative’ algorithms to its search results and seems to be able to write in different forms, purposes and audiences, all in a matter of seconds. A quick query, such as ‘write a speech for your class about the best gift you ever received’ will generate a very plausible and very submittable response. It will certainly pass most standards of written communication in the eyes of an English teacher, and will complete a homework with ease.
An experiment with ChatGTP
A few weeks ago, I wrote a quick sample answer for the CCEA GCSE Unit 4 Personal Writing task: ‘write a speech for your class about the best gift you ever received’. You can read my response here, along with some tips for students. This evening, I gave ChatGTP the exact same request, and (he? she? it? they?) replied before my very eyes with this response:
ChatGTP's first response
Dear Class,
Today, I want to talk to you about the best gift I have ever received in my life. It wasn’t something expensive or flashy, but it was a gift that meant the world to me and still does to this day.
The best gift I ever received was a handwritten letter from my grandmother. You see, my grandmother lives far away, and we don’t get to see each other often. When I was about 10 years old, she sent me a letter in the mail. In it, she told me stories about her life growing up, shared memories of our family, and expressed how much she loved and missed me.
I remember reading that letter over and over again, feeling the warmth and love in every word. It was as if my grandmother was right there with me, and it made me feel so connected to her despite the distance between us.
What made this gift so special was not just the letter itself, but the thought and effort my grandmother put into it. She took the time to sit down and write out her thoughts and feelings, which meant so much more to me than any store-bought gift ever could.
That letter taught me the power of words and the importance of staying connected with the people we love, no matter where we are in the world. It’s a gift that I will always treasure, and I still have it to this day.
So, my dear class, I hope my story has inspired you to think about the gifts that have meant the most to you in your life. It’s not about how much money was spent or how big the gift was, but the thought and effort that was put into it. Sometimes, the smallest gestures can have the greatest impact. Thank you.
Ummm … scary, right? I mean, it’s not great literature. But if Sammy from 10G wrote it, I’d be delighted! Paragraphs – check. Accurate spelling – check. Sentiment – check. Awareness of purpose and audience – check. Nicely balanced sentences – check. A clear reflection at the end – check.
Check. Check. Check. I mean, it lacks the spark of a top student, but it is a solid piece of work.
But from a Chat Bot!
I know that in my haste to collect work, mark it and return it, and my sheer delight that young Sammy has really listened in class lately, I might miss the fact that this work is certainly not his.
The scary thing is that, while there are samples of this very writing prompt out there (mine now included!), there are limited numbers of them and often, teachers have seen them too. They are often easy to spot. ChatGTP can generate and regenerate infinite responses to the same request. And its algorithm can generate responses to any writing prompt you can think of. Take a look at what happened when I hit the ‘regenerate’ for the ‘best gift’ task:
ChatGTP's second response
Good morning, everyone. Today, I want to talk about the best gift I have ever received. It wasn’t something that was particularly expensive or flashy, but it meant a lot to me.
The gift I’m talking about was a scrapbook that my best friend made for me. We had been friends since we were in kindergarten, and we had shared so many memories together. But as we got older, we started to drift apart. We went to different high schools, and we didn’t see each other as much as we used to.
One day, I received a package in the mail from my friend. Inside was a scrapbook that she had made for me. It was filled with photos of us from when we were little, notes that we had passed to each other in class, and other mementos of our friendship. As I looked through the pages, I was flooded with memories and emotions.
The thing that made this gift so special was the thought that went into it. My friend had taken the time to gather all of these items and put them together in a way that was meaningful and personal to me. It was a reminder of our friendship and how much it meant to both of us, even if we didn’t see each other as often as we used to.
This gift also taught me a valuable lesson about the importance of friendship. As we go through life, we will inevitably lose touch with some of the people who were once important to us. But it’s important to remember the memories we shared and to cherish the moments we had together.
In conclusion, the best gift I ever received wasn’t something that could be bought in a store. It was a scrapbook made with love and thoughtfulness that reminded me of the special bond that I shared with my best friend. It was a gift that will always hold a special place in my heart, and I will be forever grateful for it. Thank you.
After a quick play around, I can see the formula it is applying: greeting, open up the topic, explain the sentiment, state the gift, etc. Each regenerated response applies the formula in a new way, maintaining the structure but making it new. This is how I teach it! I teach my students a similar structure and I teaching them to learn it and ‘regenerate’ it in the exam! I feel like a fraud, now that I see how AI has taken the information and learned it for itself.
So now, I need to up my game. Teachers cannot rest on old methods. We cannot let the world change around us and block it out or ignore it. What have I learnt? Actually, perhaps this confirms that sometimes, a formula or algorithm is a useful starting point to support students (we usually call these ‘writing frames’!) but that isn’t the goal or end point. I want to build in the opportunity to soar above and beyond the formulaic responses and teach students skills to create more lively and poetic responses. I also want to ensure I can spot work that is not the genuine work of my students.
What action can teachers take?
- Know your students. In the same way that you have always done, know your students, their writing style and their common errors. If Sammy can all of a sudden use apostrophes and spell complex vocabulary correctly, you know something is amiss, same as you would have suspected something was amiss before ChatGTP came along.
- Check. Use a programme such as https://writer.com/ai-content-detector/ to run a student’s response through.
- Try going back to pen and paper answers, timed tasks and more supervised writing. Take away the opportunity to cheat! There are advantages to this: students gain examination preparation, learn to rely on themselves and work free of distractions.
- Just educating yourself, knowing about ChatGTP and being on the lookout for potential problems is an important action step too. Why not raise this at upcoming department meetings or as a whole school concern. Schools often lag behind (*shudders at 1998 14-year-old me using MSN chat in the library at lunch time, most likely talking at a middle aged man pretending to be a 14 year old girl, all under the uninformed and not always watchful eye of the librarian who really didn’t know what the internet was!)
Thanks for reading. I’d love to know your thoughts on ChatGTP: does it have uses and advantages in the classroom, or in your subject area? How can I ready myself for its widespread use? Do I need to worry about other uses/misuses? How can I better teach my students about it? Comment below, or drop me a comment using the email address here.