Chat GPT -Homework now pointless?

[mids2019]

My daughter was given an essay to write on reincarnation as part of religious studies homework.

All the class basically used AI write the homework leading to presumably a teacher spending hours marking the results of an algorithm. Is this a good use t of time? Can teachers identify the use of AI? Do we need a new model of teching/in term examination that will be meaningful going forward in this new AI world?

@MrsHamlet

At.least for basic stuff is there a danger of an AI checked identifying human out as SO output as AI output? This may result in pupils being falsely accused of cheating?

Also where the answer may be well known due to the question being asked a great deal in the past does AI produce something distinctly non human? I asked chatGPT why hamlet delayed killing his uncle and the answers given were a reasonable set of bullet points. Admittedly copying from decision guided might have given similar results but AI might allow subtle variations . If your cover about it AI could be used to ask demeaning of individual groups of lines from Shakespeare for instance and so I can see it being a useful tool for the more innovative srudent.

Sorry for the typios

I no longer set essays as homework, we do times essays in class and Will continues to do so until the exam boards change. As a school we are working on how we teach kids to use AI - getting our heads round it first though!

Teachers are starting to find it useful though - in drama they are using it to write little scenarios for lesson starters, saving them loads of time.

My solution would be for students to hand their work electronically. Teachers would then use AI to set the students three short questions specifically based on their own solutions, which they would answer in pen and paper in class. Teachers would then mark these, not the essay itself.

I know a private school which has already stopped setting essay homework for this reason. I presume they write essays in class which is a waste of time.
AI is developing fast. I don’t think you can always tell if something has been AI generated and AI will only get better.
There is a skill and art in essay writing which is the foundation of learning which will be lost. It is very sad.

Its my last day in education today and this was one of the factors that pushed me to leave. I am regularly marking work that is very clearly AI generated but I can't say it's plagiarised as its not 'copied' from a source. Really grey area at my place of work. We had a training session on it recently and whilst it's evidently a fantastic tool it's going to change education drastically. We were encouraged to use it for marking and to 'help with workload' and encourage our learners to use it. The lady teaching the course was very open about using it to write her essays for her PhD. Learners not using it would surely then be at a major disadvantage the way work is currently marked. It's made me feel so uneasy.

Well, I'm sure they'll enjoy the challenge of writing their exam scripts having not learned much of the course or practising being able to write an essay question. And I'm sure they'll think they're ever so clever when they're getting 4s at GCSE after being marked 7 all through their course.

@mids2019 a list of bullet points yes. But that's a totally pointless make work task anyway.

An essay answering that question with clear and accurate reference to the text, which hits all the assessment criteria in the right way ... it really struggles with that. As do teens. But the ones who work on that learn the skill.

Exactly this. I can tell with my own eyes. But I also have Turnitin as backup.

It's obvious when a student has used chat gpt. Exam boards also want answers in particular styles which chat gpt has not yet mastered. Anyone using chat gpt I mark honestly and it's always E or U. They soon stop doing it!

@00100001 I think it says a lot about the tasks we set in school. Humans have invented a machine that can do the job for them. No one complains when a student
programs a laser cutter to cut something out for them. They don’t hand them a coping saw and say cut it out by hand. We need to move with the times. I am a teacher and I think schools and universities will have to think about the value of some aspects of the curriculum and make some changes.

I think it's clear that the education system will have to adapt. In other countries more emphasis is already put on oral exams. If you generate all your essays using AI then you won't have much to say in your exams.
What worries me is that too much use of AI will completely rob generations of the ability to analyze source material and come to their own conclusions. Unfortunately schools always study the same texts in subjects like English so there is very little incentive to actually think of your own response to the literature when you can take it directly from chatGPT (or the various published support literature). Maybe they should study some more obscure texts that chatGPT won't find so easy to write about!

@Ggttl I teach 25 a-level students and I know exactly what each one of them is capable of in terms of written work. When you only teach a small number of students it’s perfectly possible to tell.
If I was teaching 100 students it would be harder - simply wouldn’t have the time to check for AI.

Yes, but if there's no knowledge the. It's a problem.

There a difference between using a powertool to help you drill more holes more quickly - but if you don't even know what the drill does or where it should be drilling then it's no use giving a drill to someone.

My ds with ASD really struggled (sometimes still does) to find the wording for what he has to say. He could often speak it, but could not write it. He used ChatGPT a lot - but always either rewrote its output or used it as a jumping-off point for further research. I maintain that he learned from this, because he discovered phrasing that helped with his written fluency in a way that appealed to his ASD brain. He is a computer geek, after all. He got 5s and 6s in most of his essay-based subjects at GCSE. The 6 in English Lang astounded everyone. He had been hoping to scrape a 5. Even the 4 in Eng Lit surprised him, as he had been expecting a 3.

So I think that using ChatGPT mindfully may not be a learning disaster. But then how many teens would actually do that?

I suspect that ds disengaged from Eng Lit, and was less mindful in his use of AI in that subject. (He once answered a mock question about the techniques Hemingway used to make his writing interesting by basically saying that the passage was boring because Hemingway had not used any techniques to make it interesting. He got one point for attempting to back up his argument, but failed the question.)

Ds is now beginning an EPQ on the use of AI. He has not yet made up his mind whether it will be on the ethics of using AI in study or on methods of detecting the use of AI in study.

@00100001 I think the art of churning out over wordy essays that recycle other people’s ideas is pretty pointless. All to meet a list of criteria written by someone who probably never questioned the point of it all. There are other ways to learn the content. I hope AI will force humans to up their game.

@Needmorelego thats not true, my DD did her A level History last year and there was coursework as part of her final grade, as does English...
AI is not infallible - it is not fact checked so can be incorrect.

@mondaytosunday oh I was thinking of GCSEs. When I did mine back in the stone age GCSE was more coursework and A levels were all exam.
Has it basically swapped over?

Perhaps - but it is a skill to read, research, form an opinion and back that up with facts/peer evidence. Even if your opinion isn't ground-breaking.

It teaches critical thinking, debate, research skills etc as well as opening your world to literature, history, politics, geography etc

Child A might go "Ugh... I don't care about what Shakespeare meant when he said X - what a waste of time... " and be destined to be a bridge engineer... but a Child B might go "Wow, I love that this could mean two things - I love how fascinating language is" - and become the next Poet Laureate.

They will have both learnt important skills

It's why it's a general education - so you're exposed to all sorts.

I'm wondering what Alevel results will look like this year as there is so much of it now. So many kids haven't done any thinking for a whole year now.

I use it every day at work but in a more analytical capacity.

I'd say write it and then ask ChatGPT what's missing from your essay.

Essay on reincarnation? Using ChatGPT is the perfect way to deal with this.

Obviously AI is currently error prime but as the models learn more essays the errors will decrease and the answers will appear more 'human'. One thing I find fascinating is that we do not completely know how we think as humans but we do know it is due to the connection of neurons . Neurons can be mimicked by neural networks in software so in theory it is possible to create software which acts like a human brain.

I think an intelligent child will use AI and edit appropriately so there will be human modification (e.g. Changing adjectives) so it may beat AI checkers or the teacher. Indeed a particularly innovative student may use their own AI checked before turning it in!

Also a question would be if a failing child ups their game and starts handing in better society work will the teacher unfortunatly guess at the use of AI for this and question the improvement?

Looking at my daughter's peer experience I think AI is really here to stay in main stream education. Can you good back the tide?

Alternatively AI may become less accurate if it starts trawling through essays that have been written by AI and using them, errors could become magnified.

@Meadowgrasses

intriguing questiion