In a Thursday, January 18 assembly, Dean of Students Mr. Luqman Kolade noted an uptick in end-of-semester Honor Council cases as a result of AI use. It’s been a little over a year since ChatGPT’s launch on November 30, 2022, and the chatbot has garnered varied reception among teachers and students.
Students have utilized AI technology, including ChatGPT, for various purposes. Familiarity with the technology is abundant in upper school circles. Students tend to use ChatGPT for things related to homework, although they rarely ask it to complete their assignments. For many, ChatGPT is just a supplementary resource.
English teacher Dr. Callie Ward has thus far been unimpressed with chatbots.
“I’ve played with [ChatGPT], to see what it would do. I’ve never actually used anything it produced for me… I’ve given students examples of what it can produce,” Dr. Ward said. “I, for example, asked it to provide an analysis of one of the novels I was teaching. It did such a terrible job of it, that we were all laughing at how bad it was.”
With the stigma attached to ChatGPT, it seems like teachers have not been incentivized to use ChatGPT creatively in their classrooms. Faculty and students are concerned about ChatGPT’s effects on testing and assessments. Students fear testing will increasingly be limited to standardized models.
“I think it would increase the need for standardized testing, and I think standardized testing is an entirely flawed thing in the first place, but with ChatGPT there will be more of a reliance on it,” Sixth Former Tripp Ronon said.
“I think [ChatGPT] will increase need for exams because if I were a teacher and I knew that there could be a product a student could make that is decent… I would like to test students on the spot.”
Tripp Ronon ’24
Ronon is horrified by ChatGPT.
“I think it will increase need for exams,” Ronon said, “because if I were a teacher and I knew that there could be a product a student could make that is decent—like a good B-minus student level paper without really any exerting any effort—I would like to test students on the spot, especially with handwritten things, to see how that would go.”
Dr. Ward agrees, suggesting English and humanities testing may require heightened in-class, timed assessments.
“I think that English teaches especially are already thinking about how we can find prompts that are ChatGPT-proof, and how we can structure things to do more in-class writing, so that students aren’t tempted to utilize that outside of class,” Dr. Ward said. “But it’s tough.”
Underclassmen see pen-and-paper assessments returning to their classroom.
Third Former Lucas Crutchlow said, “I think we would stay with the paper. I would think ChatGPT might help someone cheat, so they’re going to make you write paper essays in English, for example. I do hate writing essays by hand.”
Third Former Adam Brown believes anti-AI technologies may also provide solutions.
“I don’t think it would affect testing that much, because we already have technologies that can detect if you’re changing browser tabs, or even the lockdown maps testing on Chromebooks,” Brown said.
Regardless, it is clear that students and teachers foresee changes to the classroom landscape within the next few years.
“We’re into a dystopian future already. I think we should regulate it, because it is going to ruin people’s livelihoods, it is going to ruin art in this state where we’re not expected to have standards of morals, it really is just making a profit out of something,” Ronon said. “English departments won’t exist in the future. The function of education in the future, if we continue the trend of ChatGPT, universities will become engineering and business factories. There will only be two degrees: engineering and business.”
“Not even half of students I would say are using that time to come ask me questions, so they don’t feel like they have to be so overwhelmed to turn to other resources.”
Dr. Callie ward
Dr. Ward agrees.
“I would say that even though it is a challenge to keep track of my students, I still feel that not even all of the students are trying to come to me for one-on-one advice,” Dr. Ward said. Not even half of students I would say are using that time to come ask me questions, so they don’t feel like they have to be so overwhelmed to turn to other resources.”
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