The Power of ChatGPT in Education
LinkedIn, December 2022
The new app ChatGPT is heating up conversations throughout the world, but it is causing the most disruption in the educational sector. Briefly explained, the App, which was launched in November, 2022, responds to user questions by producing a variety of written responses ranging from essays, letters, poems among other writing options.
Why the outrage? Well, this means that anyone, young or old can get a written response to any question they pose and use this as their own. This is fine if you are not answering questions for an online exam or doing coursework, an official examination or expected to provide your boss with your opinion on any feature of your job.
Like in many British schools, Maxwell School students take the iGCSE and A-Level examinations many of which also require coursework. With the advent of apps like ChatGPT this coursework can be presented as prepared by the student while instead, it has been written by the App. It is almost impossible to prove that the work is not the student’s as it cannot be exposed by the normal tools teachers use to check for plagiarism. While there are now apps that supposedly can identify the use of tools such as ChatGPT, they are still not 100% effective in identifying whether the written piece is original to the student or to the machine.
As a result, at Maxwell School we tried a different approach.
In our IGCSE Literature class, we asked the app ChatGPT to write an essay for us based on a past exam question. As expected the app produced a standard 5 paragraph essay. The students then proceeded to analyse essay to see if it met the AO (Assessment Objectives) of a standard Cambridge English Literature essay response, and if so, what would be the mark it received. The students were stunned to find that there were many aspects of the AOs that were not included in the essay, and accordingly awarded an 11/25 mark which in the case of this iGCSE question was not a pass!
Indeed, apps such as ChatGPT will cause havoc in the educational community and additionally will have a great impact on the future of education, perhaps less so in the classroom than in online learning, but at the end of the day teaching and learning will adapt as it has had to do over the centuries as will Maxwell School.
