Could ChatGPT change education forever? Since November 2022, ChatGPT has been gaining popularity amongst students and teachers. Some view it as positive by providing learning opportunities while others are more skeptical of its allowed use with students.
ChatGPT can negatively impact the development of higher-level skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and research ability. It can also decrease the use of imagination and creativity. If students use ChatGPT for every assignment they receive, they do not learn the concepts and the reasons the assignment was given in the first place. Although assignments can be annoying and sometimes extremely long, there is always a specific purpose as to why they were given. Learning those skills helps students with higher-level assignments given in the future.
Abuse of ChatGPT can arise as a result of significant academic pressure on students. This misuse can involve academic dishonesty. With the rise in easy access to ChatGPT, many students are using it to write their assignments instead of using it as a tool. Students tend to get into trouble when they overuse ChatGPT at the expense of providing their ideas. Teachers have also become better at determining when ChatGPT has been misused. They can detect this because ChatGPT tends to write at a more advanced level compared to typical high school students. Even with the threat of receiving an academic dishonesty violation, students still use it to complete work done faster.
On the other hand, ChatGPT can be seen as a valuable resource that can help teachers and students with their workloads. For example, students consistently have exams coming up. ChatGPT can help them as a resource to study for them by giving questions and answers with in-depth explanations. This is extremely helpful because students often get questions and answers but need to know why their answers are right or wrong. It acts as a virtual tutor because it can also customize what questions to ask based on areas of struggle. Additionally, ChatGPT provides writing assistance for students with the main ideas they should include. It also can help organize the structure of a writing assignment by giving tips on how to write about certain prompts.
According to Cambridge University, “ChatGPT brings both new opportunities and new complexity.” Teachers and students need to keep an open mind regarding ChatGPT so they can view it as an opportunity rather than a challenge. ChatGPT can enhance students’ understanding of content and learning while also reducing the amount of workload for both students and teachers. For these reasons, I think that ChatGPT should be seen as a beneficial resource.
