Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, the generative AI chatbot has already become a household name. ChatGPT reached its first one million users in less than a week and by some estimates has already reached at least 100 million monthly active users. Parents, students, and educators alike have been impressed, and sometimes alarmed, at the chatbot’s ability to understand complex questions and requests and articulate sophisticated concepts.
ChatGPT’s implications for the future of learning have already sparked a whirlwind of questions. Will the chatbot kill writing instruction as we know it? Is it a useful tool or is it making us worse people? Is banning it, as school districts from New York to Seattle have already done, the right decision? Or must we all now adapt to living with AI as an inescapable part of students’ educational experiences?
Understanding the ways in which ChatGPT will affect both K-12 and higher education starts with understanding what it is, and how it works. Packback’s new white paper, How Academia is Adapting to Generative AI, aims to provide education leaders with an introduction to the mechanics of ChatGPT, and showcase the ways in which instructors are rising to the challenge of creating assessments and curriculum that don’t just acknowledge student use of generative AI, but utilize chatbots as a tool for student learning.
What makes ChatGPT special, and what differentiates it from the AI that is prevalent in so many classrooms already? Large language models, like the one that runs ChatGPT, are particularly good at explaining structured content and concepts concisely (like chocolate chip cookie recipes) or generating code, but its responses often lack originality and the higher-order elements of writing that are derived from critical thinking and analysis. ChatGPT’s abilities (as well as its weak points) create an opportunity for instructors to adapt their pedagogical approach to either offer authentic assessments that cannot be easily replicated by AI and encourage student critical thinking, or use generative AI as a tool for new types of assessments that test a student’s fact-checking and research skills.
As many colleges and districts begin to regulate appropriate use of ChatGPT on written assignments, administrators are taking a closer look at the types of assessments they administer and reviewing existing academic integrity policies. The white paper includes insights from these administrators, including leaders like Dr. Jeffrey Alexander, Vice President of Academic Affairs at Truckee Meadows Community College, who “expects that faculty will have to modify certain writing assignments to involve additional in-class work, peer-review, peer-editing, and so forth. Also, some form of AI-generated content detection will need to be part of the standard submission procedure.”
In addition to exploring the impact of ChatGPT itself, the paper highlights emerging applications of AI that have been proven to support student engagement and boost academic outcomes. A recent study by the University of North Texas explored the benefits of instructional AI – a model which offers personalized and encouraging real-time feedback for students while they write. The study found that Packback’s instructional AI expands the quality and breadth of feedback students receive, enables instructors to focus on higher-order feedback, and improves student engagement metrics. When using Packback, students receive highly personalized, instantaneous feedback that teaches them how – and why – to improve their written work, coupling the most effective elements of generative AI with pedagogical principles proven to support student learning and growth.
The coming months and years are likely to bring a steady stream of emerging technologies like ChatGPT that make use of the enormous power and potential of artificial intelligence. We hope this paper serves as a valuable resource for instructors and education leaders that are committed to cultivating their students’ curiosity and critical thinking while helping them prepare for a future that is increasingly dependent on the relationship between instructors, students and AI.
