Since AI tools are becoming effective assistants in many jobs, it's expected for teachers to also use them to lighten their workload. It can be used to create study plans, quizzes, and even grade essays, but experts believe there are ethical issues to consider.
Teachers Using ChatGPT
Teachers are in charge of creating a good study plan for their students, as well as grading each work that they submit. The tasks can easily stack up and leave educators with too many things to do, which is why getting assistance from an AI chatbot could be of tremendous help.
Ithaca College Professor of Strategic Communications, Diane Gayeski uses ChatGPT to assess part of the essays that her student submits. She asks the chatbot to critique the works and suggest ways in which it can be improved.
Not relying solely on the AI tool, she would share her own thoughts about the students' essays as well as the chatbot's, even suggesting to her students to use ChatGPT themselves to see where they can adjust their work, as per CNN.
While there are already policies in place for certain academic institutions for a student's use of AI tools, there are no rules for what a teacher can use it for yet such as grading or generating assignments and activities.
As for ethical concerns, the overuse of AI tools could render education useless. The cost of education can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars for tuition alone, and students relying too much on AI and teachers using AI to grade papers might not make it worth the money.
"If teachers use it solely to grade, and the students are using it solely to produce a final product, it's not going to work," Gayeski expressed. Factoring all the mentioned concerns, moderation could easily solve the issues at hand.
University of Virginia Business Ethics Professor Dorothy Leidner said that if the material being tested has declarative knowledge, meaning that there is a clear right or wrong, then AI "might be even superior to human grading."
Some metrics can be graded by AI such as structures, language use, or something as simple as grammar. However, there are certain aspects of school work that AI might not be able to comprehend such as insight and creativity from students.
Students Using AI
When ChatGPT grew in popularity, students realized that the chatbot could easily do their homework for them. All they have to do is give clear instructions and the chatbot would churn out a whole essay in under a minute.
This has become a problem for teachers and learning in general, which is why there have been AI content detectors released as well, some of which can determine whether something is fully, partly, or not created using AI tools.
Even though it has been misused in an educational sense, that's not to say that students should steer clear of AI chatbots entirely. As Gayeski suggested, tools like ChatGPT could help students improve their essays. It could even be used for brainstorming sessions and simplifying complex topics.
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