Homework and
its importance
For as long as there has been school there has been homework. While this has not always been the most loved activity by students, the process of extending their learning to time outside of the classroom has the following clear benefits:
Helps to reinforce and solidify learning
Provides practice and helps to develop problem-solving skills
Allows for independent study and self-discipline
Helps to prepare for exams and assessments
Encourages time management and organization skills
Can give students a sense of responsibility and ownership over their own learning.
In fact, after conducting an extensive review of global research on the benefits of homework the Education EndowmentFoundation(https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/) discovered that Junior students that received well-planned homework gained the equivalent of an extra three months of learning and that benefit for Senior students was even higher as they gained the equivalent of an extra five months' worth of learning.
On the 30th of November 2022 the company OpenAI released ChatGPT as a free open beta to the public in order to collect anonymous user data form those people trialling the software, in order to further refine their algorithms. OpenAI as a company had shown considerable promise, so much so in fact that both Elon Musk and Microsoft have made considerable investments in the company. It has however caused a considerable stir in the press, particularly regarding education with headlines such as “ChatGPT in Schools: Here’s Where It’s Banned—And How It Could Potentially Help Students” recently released in Forbes magazine or “Schools nationwide are banning ChatGPT” USA today are not uncommon. All of which feel very similar to articles published in the 1990’s and 2000’s with titles such as “Student cheating and plagiarism in the internet era: A wake-up call” A. Lathrop 2000.
With my extensive background in Computer Science and Educational Technology I was very keen to try out the beta program and so after signing up for a free account this is what I discovered.
I wanted to know if there was any substance to the clickbait headlines, so I decided to ask ChatGPT 6 questions of increasing difficulty to see how it would cope.
At first glance ChatGPT does not look that impressive it is basically an input box where you type in your questions.
So, a little underwhelmed I typed in my first question: “What is ChatGPT” it paused for a second and then proceeded to type out the following answer:
“I am ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI. I am designed to generate human-like responses to text-based inputs, and I have been trained on a massive dataset of text from the internet. I am capable of understanding natural language inputs and generating coherent, relevant responses based on that input. My purpose is to assist users with a wide range of tasks, from answering questions to engaging in conversation”
It was a good answer but not one I could really use to explain the program to a junior student so I then asked it to “explain what chatgpt is to a novice” to which its output:
“Sure, I'd be happy to explain what
ChatGPT is in simpler terms!
ChatGPT is a computer program that can have conversations with people in natural language, just like you might talk to a friend.
It has been designed to understand what people say to it, and to respond in a way that makes sense and is relevant to the conversation.
The way that ChatGPT works is by using a type of artificial intelligence called "machine learning." This means that it has been trained on a huge amount of text from the internet, so it can understand the way that people use language and respond
in a way that is similar to
how a human might respond.
So, if you ask ChatGPT a question or start a conversation with it, it will try to understand what you're saying and give you a helpful response. It can be used for all kinds of things, from getting information to just having a friendly chat!”
This was more impressive after a little more experimentation I found that I could lengthen, shorten or even translate the message into Chinese, Arabic or Welsh just by asking it to do so. But how would ChatGPT cope with academic questions?
A relatively advance Mathematics homework question
I asked ChatGPT to answer the following question
Again, after thinking for a couple of seconds, it then proceeded to give me not only the answer but also the reasons behind the answer
A relatively advanced Biology question
Next up I wanted to see how it coped with a question from a recent Biology paper. I entered the following question and was quickly given a correct answer
I had read that ChatGPT was particularly good at producing computer code, so I asked it to answer the following question:
To which it happily produced the following code (again all correct)
Now this was really exciting it was producing code in Python and SQL which it would then continue to adjust, amend and explain based on any follow up instructions. This will clearly have a huge impact on the future of programming, enabling far more people to produce useful programs and really open up the industry to a wider audience. But so far, I had only asked it fact-based questions how would ChatGPT cope with an opinion-based question?
Write an opinion piece
on the Merchant of Venise
As one of my favourite Shakespearian plays, I wanted to know how ChatGPT would write a summary of the play but from the viewpoint of Shylock the main protagonist. Once again it did not disappoint:
The potential impact of ChatGPT on education and homework were becoming very clear now but for my final question I wanted to know how ChatGPT would cope with more creative questions.
Write me a children's story about a rabbit called Paul who meets an Alien called Marvin it must teach a moral and end with a Joke
I had been very impressed up to now but honestly doubted that it would be able to answer my last question. I was wrong.
As with all the answers ChatGPT provided, if I did not like I the answer I could click on a button, and it would generate a new answer for me. While ChatGPT is not perfect (e.g. it is not available without VPN in China or Hong Kong and has been known to occasionally give incorrect or even biased answers) the impact of AI on homework was now clear to me and things are going to have to change.
Taking it further AI
beyond ChatGPT
ChatGPT is not the only Artificial Intelligence (AI) programme out on the market, with this in mind I decided to see what else was available. One of the most interesting variations on the theme is DALLE 2. This is an AI program that produces original copyright free art based on the requirements of the user. Ask it to produce a picture of two teddy bear scientists or an astronaut riding a horse and it will produce something like this:
In fact all of the images in this article have been produced using AI. Clearly, keeping in mind that ChatGPT is currently only in beta and with announcements by both Google and Microsoft that AI will soon be incorporated into their new upcoming browsers we are clearly standing at the beginning of yet another technological revolution.
It’s not a bad – the other side of
the coin and the benefits of ChatGPT
At this point my concern about the impact of ChatGPT on education and especially homework (which as noted above is very valuable to student learning but by its nature is less structured and supervised) is very clear. But what about the other side of the coin, like the internet could ChatGPT and AI also provide benefits to student education. With this question in mind I decided to ask ChatGPT what it though the benefits of AI would be on student learning. This is its answer in the form of bullet points (ChatGPT can do that as well):
AI has the potential to revolutionize the way education is delivered by providing personalized support and guidance
This could lead to an increase in student engagement and a decrease in traditional homework help
This could ultimately lead to an improvement in student performance
I have to say that on the whole I agree with these points as teachers we strive to deliver individualised learning that meets the needs of each one of our children, ChatGPT may be the golden bullet that makes this a full reality in all classes, enabling all students to reach their full learning potential.
As I have mentioned above the Pandoras box of AI has now been opened and like the internet and the printing press before it, it will not be closed, so we now must learn to live, work and teach with Artificial intelligence. Thankfully there are steps we can take to ensure that we gain the benefit from AI while also guarding against the possibilities of plagiarism etc. Some of with are:
Moving high stakes assessed work away from homework activities to classroom-based activities, with homework playing a possible greater revision role
Use AI detectors: As soon as ChatGPT was released companies such as Turnitin etc. launched AI detectors that can read submitted work and then suggest how much was generated by AI
Where appropriate insist that work is referenced. Currently this is something that ChatGPT is not able to do
Ask students to verbally present their homework in class, answering questions to assess whether or not they understand the work that they have turned it (This is good practice even before AI)
Include work that makes use of personal experiences, that is hyper local or very recent (ChatGPT currently only references information from September 2021 and so is unable to answer any questions after that date.) as AI will struggle to answer these questions
The possible rebirth of pen and paper. While technology will play an ever-growing part of education this could be an ideal opportunity to make use of tasks that are produced using pen and paper.
In summary yes, I feel that ChatGPT and AI in general will have a profound effect on education, however like the internet before it I am very confident that we at Merchiston will quickly adapt and be able to take full advantage of its benefit while also guarding against the potential pit falls. In short I remain very excited for the future of education.
