We should be scared of ChatGPT, but not for the reasons you think
Talk of ChatGPT has consumed the educational field for the past few months. From enthusiasts to cynics, the generative AI tool has been at the forefront of much debate concerning the future of higher education. Some people consider it a revolutionary tool that can be used to enhance teaching and learning. Hirsche-Pasek and Blinkoff argue that ‘used in the right way, ChatGPT can be a friend to the classroom and an amazing tool for our students, not something to be feared’ (2023). There seems to be a common thread amongst researchers that ChatGPT can be used in an instructive way — but only if we are careful and intentional.
The fear surrounding ChatGPT is centred on its ability to let students cheat — they can ask the tool to write their essays, answer their assignment questions and basically do the work they need to do in order to get their qualification.
Although most people use ChatGPT as an alternative to search engines or for creative writing, it can write a student’s paper as well as computer code, critically analyze research writings, solve case studies, or any other task assigned to writing emails, letters, or poetry, with or without instructions (Chaudry et al., 2023, p. 2)
This poses a serious problem for higher education institutions; ChatGPT threatens academic integrity and, apart from some questionable detection tools, there is not much institutions can do to stop it.
But I think we’re looking at the problem from the wrong angle.
We’re so focussed on finding a solution to the problem of student’s cheating, scrambling for a way to stop them from finding loopholes in order to avoid doing their assessments, that we haven’t stopped to ask ourselves: Why are students so desperate to avoid doing the work?
ChatGPT may be the newest tool allowing students to bypass completing their work themselves, but it’s not the first and it won’t be the last. Essay mills and academic malpractice is not a new issue (Sweeney, 2023), ChatGPT has just made it a bit trickier to manage.
So, we can continue on the path we’re on — finding ways to police and prevent students from using technology to avoid doing the work themselves. Or, we can strip it back and figure out WHY students don’t want to do the work. Some people might argue that students are lazy. I vehemently disagree. Blaming students for outsourcing their work and assessments to technology gives us, as educators, a free pass. It gives our education systems a free pass. Not our fault, it’s the students. It may be painful to take accountability, but it’s necessary. We cannot keep shifting blame onto students. Otherwise, nothing will ever change.
Where has the joy gone?
Learning should be a joy. It is a privilege and should be a transformative experience, allowing students to spark their curiosity, nurture their passions, and cultivate their talents and areas of interest. We are neurologically hardwired to want to learn. It helps us survive. Isn’t it tragic that students stop enjoying learning pretty much the moment they enter compulsory schooling? Isn’t it tragic that our educational systems have managed to bypass our neurological wiring to want to learn?
Nurseries and early years education promote the joy of learning — children are allowed to have fun while they learn. And then, we put them into classrooms and we immediately begin testing them, ranking them, and putting pressure on them to compete with one another. And we wonder why students end up seeing learning as hoops to jump through. Grades, grades, grades. Or, we ask ourselves, why do students hate school? According to figures published by the Freedom of Information requests, the number of home-educated students has increased by 40% since 2018. That is a staggering figure. Government officials are trying to get students to return to the education system. But, why are they not asking the simple question: Why do students not enjoy being at school? It’s not that they don’t enjoy learning; it’s that they don’t enjoy how they are learning. A quick Google search will provide you with hundreds of examples where students actually enjoy their learning when at home or in a different environment. You may have seen the recent September 2023 news article about Florrie, a teenage girl who hated school so much that her mother, a former deputy headteacher, had no choice but to remove her to learn at home, where she was much happier and more motivated to learn.
We wonder why we have students who just want to get to the end whilst doing as minimal work as possible. We just cannot fathom why students keep turning to potential outsourcing to complete the learning for them. If we’re willing to look, the reason is staring us right in the face.
Our educational systems are flawed. Maybe our institutions, structured on standardisation, frequent testing, ranking, and competition, need to be redesigned. Maybe, just maybe, the way we have designed education has sucked all of the enjoyment out of learning.
This is nothing short of a tragedy.
And it doesn’t matter how many policies we write to stop students from outsourcing their work; it doesn’t matter how many rules we enforce, how many students we disqualify, how many tools we employ to detect cheating. It won’t change the fact that our students just don’t enjoy their learning.
So, we should absolutely fear ChatGPT. Not because it allows our students to cheat, but because it has illuminated the very terrifying reality that our students will do anything they can to avoid learning.
In this terrifying reality, we have to ask ourselves: What is the point in what we’re doing? If our students aren’t actually learning, then why are we here? Have we lost sight of the true purpose of education? Have our institutions, that once represented knowledge, innovation, expansion and joy, become mere paper factories? Churning out qualifications by the thousands and turfing out students who have survived a few years of constant pressure, elated that they have finally finished learning. Or, more accurately, what they’ve come to know as ‘learning’.
When the so-called ‘knowledge economy’ (BIS, 2009) was first conceptualised, I cannot fathom that this was what was envisioned.
So what do we do?
I would argue that there is no simple answer, no easy solution. No matter how hard we search for one. It will be a long road, and it will require all of us in the educational system to make waves. Educators alone cannot restructure the system; they’re fighting in an arena that they did not build, with weapons that are outdated and ineffective.
We need a top-down restructure. And we need it now.
We need to rebuild our education system to spark joy. We need to design teaching and learning around the way in which we, as humans, learn best. That means sparking curiosity, embracing failure, emphasising sociality, drawing on our emotions, and doing all of this in authentic ways.
This is how we should deal with ChatGPT. This is how we will deal with any and all artificial intelligence that comes our way.
For once, let’s fight change with change.
REFERENCES
BIS (Department for Business Innovation & Skills), 2009. Higher Ambitions: The future of universities in a knowledge economy, executive summary. London: HMSO.
Chaudhry, I. S., Sarwary, S. A. M., El Refae, G. A. and Chabchoub, H. (2023). Time to revisit existing student's performance evaluation approach in higher education sector in a new era of ChatGPT - A case study. Cogent Education, 10(1).
Hirsche-Pasek, K. & Blinkoff, E. (2023, January 9). Brookings. Available from: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chatgpt-educational-friend-or-foe/
Martin, N. (2023, September 5). Teen describes why she left ‘hellhole’ school to learn online - as country could face education shake-up. Sky News. Available from: https://news.sky.com/story/teen-describes-why-she-left-hellhole-school-to-learn-online-as-country-could-face-education-shake-up-12955031
Sweeney, S. (2023). Who wrote this? Essay mills and assessment: Considerations regarding contract cheating and AI in higher education. The International Journal of Management Education, 21, 1-7.
Tidman, Z. (2023, January 4). Warning children will be ‘lost outside system’ as homeschooling soars after pandemic. Independent. Available from: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/homeschool-children-education-schools-pandemic-b2243502.html
