Comic Steve Martin as soon as stated that instructing is like present enterprise. I attempt to preserve this in thoughts after I’m giving school lectures.
However what occurs when the entertaining professor will get upstaged by a chatbot that may produce the lecture in addition to write scholar papers and take the ultimate examination? Does the faculty class change into a meaningless joke?
Effectively, no.
There are individuals who worry that ChatGPT, Bard and different generative AI bots will let college students outsource their very own studying. However I educate media historical past. I do know that new media applied sciences don’t make individuals out of date. Video didn’t kill the radio star.
So somewhat than slip some language about ChatGPT within the coverage part of my syllabus about plagiarism (which gained’t cease college students who know concerning the apps that may rewrite papers to evade detection), my plan this fall is to give attention to creating interactive classes that incorporate chatbots instantly into my instructing.
As a substitute of letting chatbots change the training course of, I’ll present my college students that something that chatbots can do, they’ll do higher.
Lots of my college students have been already making an attempt out ChatGPT final yr. As a result of chatbots will be particularly helpful for performing routine duties, one scholar defined that she had began to make use of ChatGPT at her job in customer support to generate fast responses to complaints, which she would then rewrite to enhance.
Whereas chatbots are in a position to try this type of process effectively, extra difficult duties, resembling historic essays, is usually a catastrophe. However these limitations additionally open the door to instructing workouts that present college students easy methods to use this know-how of their work.
Professors instructing writing abilities can have chatbots generate outlines, drafts and different lists of concepts. Then, the professor can direct college students to work in small teams to rewrite the textual content for better originality.
Chatbots additionally provide a possibility to show essential considering and media literacy abilities. ChatGPT is susceptible to creating up false data out of the data-driven cloud — a phenomenon its handlers euphemistically name “hallucinations.” Which means that college students must learn to examine information and confirm data, utilizing citable sources and databases.
Professors can even educate college students to be alert to the systemic racism and sexism that AI bots can perpetuate and amplify due to the supply texts they’re drawing from. I as soon as requested ChatGPT to write down an inventory of a number of the main students of the U.S. Structure and the first Modification. Its response included solely white males — as if no particular person from one other background, ethnicity or gender ever studied the U.S. Structure.
An answer to this downside? Present college students how they may give the chatbot follow-up prompts that generate extra full solutions — say, particularly to incorporate individuals of shade, completely different genders and various backgrounds. Once I did this, ChatGPT readily listed Kimberlé Crenshaw, Ange-Marie Hancock and different distinguished constitutional students.
For my courses this fall, I’m additionally creating “AI Moments,” the place my college students will get an opportunity to see who does it higher: the robotic or the professor.
After I current a brand new lesson and discuss it with my college students, I’ll immediate ChatGPT to offer a lecture on the exact same topic.
To check out this concept over the summer time, I requested ChatGPT to rewrite my brief lecture on the historical past of broadcast media. Unsurprisingly, the textual content it generated was horrible. Only one cliché after one other. The AI-generated draft additionally made unhealthy phrase selections — changing the phrase “media” with “platform” (not all media are platforms). It modified my query, “Did the emergence of broadcast TV imply the tip of going to the flicks?” and as an alternative requested, “whether or not the emergence of broadcast TV resembled the demise of cinema attendance attributable to the rise of radio.” This phrase selection altered the that means of the purpose, which is that new media don’t substitute the outdated.
Once I re-create this train in my classroom, I plan to have my college students search ChatGPT’s lecture for unhealthy writing that they’ll rewrite, turning every cliché into unique imagery and poor phrase selections into one thing extra exact. I’ll additionally ask them to search out and eradicate bias and fact-check for inaccuracies.
What I discovered from my follow matches with ChatGPT is that I do know extra about instructing journalism, writing and media historical past — regardless that the chatbot can draw from huge quantities of knowledge on the web. And extra importantly, it can not share concepts precisely or in a inventive and fascinating means.
I need my college students to study to make use of AI successfully, since these instruments will change into ever extra frequent and perhaps even indispensable in workplaces and in schooling. I believe the easiest way to try this is to make this know-how a part of their classroom expertise.
Elizabeth Blakey teaches media historical past at Cal State Northridge. This text was produced in partnership with Zócalo Public Sq..
