Can ChatGPT be used in education?
robot, by Terry Freedman
I asked ChatGPT, and here’s what it said:
ChatGPT is a language model that can be used for a variety of natural language processing tasks, such as text generation, conversation modeling, and question answering. Here are some potential pros and cons of using ChatGPT in education:
Pros:
ChatGPT can be used to generate realistic and engaging text, which can be used to create interactive educational materials such as virtual tutors, personalized feedback, and interactive storytelling.
ChatGPT can be fine-tuned on specific domains, such as education, to provide more accurate and relevant responses.
ChatGPT can be used to assess student understanding by generating questions and evaluating student responses.
Cons:
ChatGPT is based on a large amount of text data, so it may not be able to accurately model certain topics or domains that are not well-represented in its training data.
ChatGPT is a language model and does not have the ability to understand or reason about the content of text, which may limit its ability to provide accurate and reliable feedback.
As chatGPT is a model which is based on huge amount of data, it could be a challenge to fine-tune the model for a specific domain and get accurate results.
There is also a question of privacy and ethical concerns, as ChatGPT is fed with huge amount of data, which could be personal or sensitive, so there is risk of leakage of personal information.
Overall, ChatGPT can be a useful tool for education, but it's important to keep in mind its limitations and to use it appropriately in light of the context.
My view
I think much of this is pretty anodyne. One presumed advantage as I understand it (I haven’t tried this myself) is that ChatGPT can be used to generate the outline of a presentation. From what I’ve read, this saves a lot of time, in terms of research and summarising. But it doe not obviate the need to flesh it out and make it your own.
Perhaps another advantage is that it has the potential to raise the game in terms of setting questions. To my mind, a question that can be answered by ChatGPT probably isn’t worth asking in the first place. To be honest, I think the question I asked it about education falls into that category. Therefore, I asked a follow-up question:
Should ChatGPT be used in education?
Here’s what it said:
Whether or not ChatGPT should be used in education depends on the specific use case and the goals of the educational program. ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can be used to generate engaging text and provide personalized feedback, but it is important to consider its limitations as well.
Here are a few things to consider when deciding whether or not to use ChatGPT in education:
The specific task: ChatGPT is well-suited for tasks such as text generation, conversation modeling, and question answering. However, if the task requires a more advanced understanding of the content or the ability to reason about the information, ChatGPT may not be the best option.
The domain: ChatGPT is based on a large amount of text data, so it may not be able to accurately model certain topics or domains that are not well-represented in its training data.
Student's level: ChatGPT can be fine-tuned on specific domains, such as education, to provide more accurate and relevant responses, however if the student is a beginner it might be confusing and more difficult to understand.
Ethical concerns: As ChatGPT is fed with huge amount of data, which could be personal or sensitive, so there is risk of leakage of personal information.
It's also worth noting that using chatGPT in education should not be seen as a replacement to human teacher, but rather as an additional tool that can enhance the learning experience.
Overall, ChatGPT can be a useful tool for education, but it's important to carefully consider the specific use case and the goals of the educational program before deciding to use it. Also it's important to have appropriate measures to maintain the security and privacy of the student's data.
I think that’s a better, that is more nuanced, answer.
Stephen Downes has been collating lots of articles and podcasts etc about using ChatGPT in education. I haven’t read any of it yet, but I’ve bookmarked it to read when I’ve managed to get through the current stack of books to review. Here it is: ChatGPT for Educators
Can ChatGPT write decent book reviews?
I asked ChatGPT what makes a good book review. I then asked it to review two books, and published those reviews alongside my own reviews of the same books. It was an interesting experiment, and the comments in the discussion are worth reading. The very short version is that I don’t have to give up my book reviewing work just yet.
Here’s my article: