Teaching with Technology
Comedian Steve Martin once said that teaching is like show business. I try to keep this in mind when I’m giving college lectures. But what happens when the entertaining professor gets upstaged by a chatbot that can produce the lecture as well as write student papers and take the final exam? Does the college class become a meaningless joke? Well, no.
Embracing Chatbots, Not Fearing Them
While some fear that ChatGPT, Bard, and other generative AI bots will let students outsource their own learning, media history professor Elizabeth Blakey knows better. She understands that new media technologies do not make people obsolete. Instead of slipping some language about ChatGPT in the policy section of her syllabus about plagiarism, she plans to incorporate chatbots directly into her teaching by creating interactive lessons.
Teaching Students to Excel with Chatbots
Blakey believes that instead of letting chatbots change the learning process, she can show her students that anything chatbots can do, they can do better. While chatbots excel at routine tasks, they struggle with more complex assignments like historical essays. This opens the door to teaching exercises that demonstrate how to use chatbot technology effectively. Professors teaching writing skills can have chatbots generate outlines, drafts, and lists of ideas, which students can then rewrite for greater originality.
Cultivating Critical Thinking Skills
Chatbots also provide an opportunity to teach critical thinking and media literacy skills. Blakey highlights that chatbots like ChatGPT may generate false information, requiring students to verify facts using reliable sources and databases. Moreover, she emphasizes the need to address the systemic biases that AI bots can perpetuate. By giving the chatbot follow-up prompts that encourage inclusivity and diversity, students can actively combat biases in AI-generated responses.
AI Moments in the Classroom
To further engage her students with chatbot technology, Blakey plans to create “AI Moments” in her classes. After presenting a new lesson and discussing it with her students, she will prompt ChatGPT to give a lecture on the same subject. By comparing the chatbot’s lecture with her own, students can critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches.
Teaching Students to Use AI Effectively
While chatbots have access to vast amounts of information, Blakey asserts that they cannot accurately and creatively share ideas like human instructors. She wants her students to learn to use AI effectively, as these tools will become increasingly prevalent in workplaces and education. By incorporating chatbot technology into the classroom experience, Blakey believes she can prepare her students for the future.
Elizabeth Blakey teaches media history at Cal State Northridge.