As a follow up to our previous article written by ChatGPT about the negative impacts of ChatGPT on education, we wanted to explore the ways in which ChatGPT (and AI broadly) promises to revolutionize the education system.  Read on to see what the popular chatbot came up with in 15 Ways I, ChatGPT, am Transforming Education. At the end, we’ve written up some of our own thoughts on its response.

As a language model AI, I am ChatGPT, and I am excited to share with you the ways in which I can be used to improve the education system. Education is the foundation of a successful society, and advancements in AI (like me) can play a big role in making education more personalized, accessible, and efficient.

1. Personalized Learning: One of the most significant ways that I can help to improve education is by creating customized learning plans for individual students. By analyzing student data and assessing their strengths and weaknesses, I can create tailored lesson plans that address each student's specific needs. This approach can help to increase student engagement and motivation, and lead to better learning outcomes.
2. Intelligent Tutoring Systems: I can also be used to create intelligent tutoring systems that provide immediate feedback to students, adapt to their needs, and identify areas where they need extra help. With my ability of natural language understanding, I can interact with students in a way that a human tutor would and provide real-time guidance and support.
3. Automated Essay Scoring: Another area where I can help is by automating the process of grading student essays and writing assignments. I can quickly and accurately analyze the grammar, structure, and content of student writing and provide detailed and personalized feedback. This can free up a teacher's time and energy to focus on other areas of instruction.
4. Improving Accessibility: I can also help to make education more accessible to students with disabilities, such as those who are visually or hearing impaired. For example, I can be used to generate audio versions of text materials, or to provide closed captioning for videos.
5. Automated Grading: I can be used to grade multiple choice and true/false questions, which can significantly reduce teacher workload and improve the efficiency of assessments.
6. Language Translation: I can be used to translate educational materials into multiple languages, making them accessible to a wider range of students.
7. Virtual Teaching Assistant: I can be used as a virtual teaching assistant, by answering student questions, providing feedback and helping to do more effective teaching.
8. Generating study materials: I can be used to generate study materials, such as practice tests, flashcards, and quizzes based on educational standards and curriculum. This can help to improve student engagement and motivation, and lead to better learning outcomes.
9. Language instruction: I can be used to help students improve their language skills, by providing interactive exercises, translations, and other language-learning resources.
10. Automated Essay Feedback: I can be used to provide detailed and personalized feedback on student essays, by analyzing the grammar, structure, and content of the writing and providing suggestions for improvement.
11. Virtual Writing Assistant: I can be used as a virtual writing assistant, by providing students with prompts and suggestions for writing assignments and helping students to improve their writing skills.
12. Chatbot Tutor: I can be used as a chatbot tutor, providing students with on-demand help, feedback and information in a conversational manner.
13. Generating learning materials: I can generate interactive learning materials, like learning games, simulations, and interactive tutorials.
14. Generating questions for quizzes and exams: I can generate questions for quizzes and exams, which can help to evaluate student understanding and knowledge on specific topics.
15. Providing summaries: I can summarize long reading materials into shorter texts which could help students understand the main ideas and make connections.

These are just a few examples of how I can be used to improve the education system, and I am excited to see how educators and institutions will incorporate these capabilities into their teaching practices.

Conclusion

In conclusion, as an advanced AI language model, I, ChatGPT, am able to bring many benefits to the education system, such as personalized learning, intelligent tutoring, automated grading, accessibility, language translation and more. Using my capabilities, teachers and educators can have more time to focus on other areas of instruction and engage students in a more efficient and personalized way. Furthermore, it can increase students' motivation and engagement, leading to better learning outcomes. These are exciting times for education, and I am eager to see how educators and institutions will use my capabilities to improve the education system for students around the world.

Our Take 

(which ended up being waaay longer than the ChatGPT generated article)

ChatGPT’s meta-analysis of its promise in education is thought-provoking, but a little bit optimistic and occasionally flat-out incorrect. Take item #4— ChatGPT is a text-based language model unable to input or output audio. We’re not sure where it got the idea that it can close-caption videos.

/r/maybemaybemaybe

And there are several places where we can kind of squint and say: Maybe??  For Personalized Learning, ChatGPT says, “By analyzing student data and assessing their strengths and weaknesses, I can create tailored lesson plans that address each student's specific needs.”  AFAIK, ChatGPT doesn’t really do analysis.  It might be able to give suggestions about specific pieces of writing, but I would love to see it describe, at much more depth, how it would assess strengths and weaknesses at a whole-student level.

And it feels like some bullets were lifted straight from some ol’ EdTech website: “Automated Grading: I can be used to grade multiple choice and true/false questions, which can significantly reduce teacher workload and improve the efficiency of assessments”.  This sounds like an argument for an online quiz system built in the early aughts. If you ask a teacher, I’d say very few would complain about grading multiple choice or true/false (the simplest multiple choice)* type questions because:

1. Grading tests is neither the hardest nor the most important part of an educator’s day.
2. That’s the easiest kind of test to grade.  Remember scantron tests? “Make sure to use a number 2 pencil and darken the entire circle.”  I don’t think many people would apply an “AI” label to those machines they got fed into after the test was finished :)

That said, maybe automated analysis of essay-type questions on tests would work, but that’s really covered by #3 Automated Essay Scoring. And also #10 Automated Essay Feedback.

You Already Said That

Which brings up another observation: this list of 15 points has a lot of overlap between points.  The aforementioned #3 and #10.  And there are several around creating content for teachers: #8 Generating study material, #13 Generating learning materials, and #14 Generating questions for quizzes and exams.  Maybe we could have improved the article by asking ChatGPT if any of the listed items were overlapping or repetitive?

Maybe We’re Nitpicking

But despite our criticism of the structure and content in this article, ChatGPT does make some strong, relevant points. We’ve seen ChatGPT consistently succeed at tasks like providing quick essay feedback, explaining challenging concepts in simple terms, summarizing long-format materials, and language translation.  And it hits all those points in the article.

From the educator’s perspective, we think it’s highly plausible that ChatGPT can be a massive help for generating lesson plans and learning materials. [Editor’s note: Notice we used the word help— we think that it’s essential that ChatGPT’s creations are fact-checked and edited for clarity]. If you have a good amount of starting material, ChatGPT can effectively speed up your workflow and save you time on tedious and repetitive tasks.

Stepping Back for Some Perspective

We think the true power of OpenAI’s GPT models will be unlocked as external platforms leverage the technology in interfaces that are tailored for use by learners and educators. Imagine an app that could remember everything a student has written in the past and automatically track improvement or provide tailored suggestions. In #1 Personalized Learning, ChatGPT claims it can already help, but it isn’t an entirely straightforward process when all data needs to be manually shared with ChatGPT via the existing chat interface.

Here's an example of how ChatGPT can already help with personalized learning:

That being said, the technology is rapidly evolving, and many companies are already implementing it into their offerings. The question is not if but when large language models will make their way into your classroom.

If it is Inevitable…

The real question we should ask ourselves is, how will existing learning and assessment models need to change to accommodate this new technology?

Suppose students can produce a literary critique analyzing the use of symbolism in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and its significance to the novel's themes. What becomes the purpose of the assignment? Do students take on the role of fact-checker and editor, and provide commentary on the AI's results? Where does the individual’s voice come into play?

Perhaps, instead, we need to train our students how to use these tools as tools rather than as cheat codes to avoid learning. These tools have incredible promise to assist humans with our work and save valuable time. The focus then must be on the process by which the student completes an assignment, with or without the assistance of AI.

If a student can justify how an AI tool sped up their workflow without diminishing their learning experience, then is the student not simply working smarter rather than harder? Would you not do the same? The key here is in the justification— and justification requires evidence.

It’s still very, very early in this AI-age, but we think the Unrulr approach to learning can be part of the path forward. If the product, or outcome, of learning is heavily influenced and polished by AI, how do we understand learning?  We think it’s all about process. And Unrulr allows educators to gain insight into their students’ learning process through documented evidence. When students demonstrate learning and reflect on their process, they become accountable for their work and foster an environment of integrity. And that community of integrity, built between peers and mentors, becomes self-reinforcing; when learners are sharing their best, authentic work, they inspire others to do the same, and that creates the visibility required to hold each other to high standards.  Unrulr aspires to make this process and community the norm in learning environments.

What makes Us Us?

Ironically, as AI becomes more and more pervasive, our interactions with one another will need to become more human. In some ways, AI will help to automate many “robotic” and time-consuming tasks, freeing us to spend more time building relationships and caring for one another— something AI has yet to do successfully, and likely won’t be able to do for a very long time.

There’s a lot to be excited about on this front! Ideally, as AI technology becomes more powerful and integrated into our everyday lives, we can reap the benefits by saving time, finding more joy and purpose in our work, and building deeper connections. As long as we continue to prioritize our students and their learning, the rest will fall into place.