During the Covid-19 pandemic, society became increasingly more digitalized, evidenced in education, as classes moved from the traditional classroom setting to online meeting apps like Zoom, Google Meet, and MS Teams. However, given the lack of capabilities of schools to conduct extensive oversight over the integrity of their students, the concern of cheating became rampant among the virtual halls of school faculties.
ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, became infamous for allowing students to simply enter a phrase, sentence, or question and be given an answer. This presented a new challenge for teachers: how do they tell if an assignment is made by a student or copied from an AI? In this interview with Ms. Alyssa Aurelio, a fresh graduate English teacher, we find out her thoughts on the use of AI and whether it’s possible to tell the work of AI from that of a real student.
Ms. Aurelio made it clear that the use of ChatGPT is inevitable and that she holds no grudge against those who do, given that she has also used the application before. She stated that it was fine to utilize the AI to get an idea of a certain topic or to summarize the contents of a long paper for research purposes.
However, she draws the line when it gets used in writing formal papers like essays and research papers. She has also seen instances where students were caught using the AI. According to her, a telltale sign of AI use would be in the structure of an essay as it would usually be ambiguous or vague, possessing unclear word choices that are over the top and often out of the vocabularies of most of the student body.
When asked about the severity of the presence of AI within the students of MHCS, she stated that it was quite severe as almost every student uses it. The reason behind this is that it makes life easier and allows students to turn in submissions earlier.
Ms. Aurelio has stated the alarming concern that the overall quality of students' work is dropping and that it could lead to dependency on AI tools and that if students become overly reliant on the use of AI to complete assignments, the quality of their work would drop significantly when they are unable to use it, such as during pen-and-paper examinations.
She further noted that it is "disappointing" to catch someone using AI, and that the way to deal with such students would be to avoid openly scolding them and instead focus on deductions on their work.
In line with this, she advocates that teachers should find the ideal ethical limits of AI use, and that there must be an implementation of formal and stricter guidelines on the use of AI as well. She also emphasized the importance of promoting greater responsibility among students when it comes to the use of AI.
ChatGPT has placed AI tools in the spotlight when it comes to education. It has offered vast benefits and opportunities for students, yet it has also brought significant drawbacks for them on personal and academic levels.
Yes, it makes tasks easier and reduces the monotony of homeworks, but it can also promote a culture of instant results and low-depth thinking processes. Both teachers and students alike need to know how to navigate the challenges in using AI in education to maximize its benefit and minimize its costs.
Story by Enoch Samson
Comments