Leveraging ChatGPT as an Educational tool?

The Neutral

ChatGPT was released in November 2022 for trial. It can be found and used online (OpenAI, 2022). As of January 2023, the chat feature is still available for beta use and testing. 

The program works simply. You open a chatbot and ask it to create or answer a question. The AI responds based on a compilation of information that has already been fed into the system. For example, a teacher struggling to create specialized content could type their question into the chatbot and would be given a response.

The Good

These types of requests could be used to help teachers create original content: 

1. Lesson Plans - You can make a request for a specialized lesson plan syntax, grammar, exercises, and more. 

2. Research - ChatGPT can write full academic papers with mostly accurate information (This presents its own problems as AI could be a potential research tool, but students and staff would need to adjust learning goals as the tool could be misused) (Zhai, 2022).

3. Storytelling - Storytelling is often used to teach through example. Now whole plots can be written in a matter of seconds (See ChatGPT make-your-own adventure exercise below).

The Bad

Over the next 30 years, jobs within AI will increase. Many jobs in the future will become automated, but most hands-on jobs (such as teaching) will most likely not be automated (Sun, 2022). Having someone to oversee and analyze physical components (such as a trade) or physical social interactions (such as teaching) will be necessary, at least within the next few decades. 

Teachers should be looking to use AI tools, since they are already here and will be here for the foreseable future. AI will change the future landscpae of education, and societal functions, in ways we may not yet be aware of. However, leveraging the product to be able to use for educational purposes could be a huge asset to managing educational content, lesson plans, and student goals.

Conclusion

Like all tools and resources, they can be used for "good" or "bad" purposes. For example, the use of the Internet has opened doors, communities, and information that would otherwise have been slow to proliferate. On the other hand, it has opened doors for questionable communities to gather. We have to take the good with the bad, and use it for the better purpose. 

We need to identify how we can channel this new technology to use it as a resource for good (i.e. course development, changing learning goals, exercises for students, creation of original content and storytelling to engage the learner).