Earlier today, I got a complaint from an educational program officer that junior and senior secondary school students are using ChatGPT to do school assignments. This is the exact phrase: “…they DIRECTLY feed a question and write down the answer…”
At first, I thought the students’ learning appetite was quite high (JSS students often rely on YouTube; ChatGPT’s text-based interface doesn’t motivate them). Then I received the text quoted above.
Obviously, this is a big problem that requires addressing (I imagine that many other schools are currently experiencing the same challenge). At the top of my mind, as a short-term remedy, I recommended a) introducing active monitoring of how the students use the tool for their education and b) blocking ChatGPT during weekdays to deny them access to the platform.
This challenge questions the essence of assignments in such scenarios, but even more fundamentally, it provides a vital insight into re-imagining formal education in contemporary society. New assessment criteria are needed – preferably those prioritizing the depth of reasoning rather than the correctness of answers.
This challenge also reveals the importance of human agency for AI products. Technologies like AI can only effectively realize the intended outcome (as dreamed of by both developers and users) when deeply integrated into the reality of the people who utilize them. Despite their power, these tools cannot – and should not – replace the essential role of educators.
