chat Capturing the world’s attention in recent weeks, it has educators and policymakers debating its implications for education, academic honesty, accessibility, and more.
OpenAI’s chatbot can compose poems, it can write an article about global warming like a Taylor Swift song, it can call up HTML code instantly — the possibilities are nearly endless.
ChatGPT isn’t the only AI chatbot available to students and educators (other options include Google’s cold and the latest version from Microsoft bing), but it certainly seems to be the most discussed.
Chatbots raise specific concerns in education, will students use them to cheat? Where is the line between research and plagiarism? What role do chatbots play in creating accessible learning tools for students with diverse needs? Here are five things to think about as tools like ChatGPT become more prominent in learning:
1. ChatGPT is rapidly infiltrating K-12 classrooms nationwide. A recent study.com survey found that nearly 90 percent of students admitted to using OpenAI’s chatbot in some home-related capacity, and more than 25 percent of teachers had actually caught a student cheating using the chatbot. . The tendency of students to use ChatGPT to cheat has caused concern among teachers and even prompted several school districts, from New York City public schools to the Los Angeles Unified School District, to issue bans on the chatbot. However, cheating with ChatGPT is just a symptom of a larger problem with education: the emphasis on rote memorization and regurgitation of information.
Laura Askion is the Managing Editor of eSchool Media. She is a graduate of the Philip Merrill School of Journalism at the University of Maryland.