One in four U.S. adults consult a bot to learn something, up from 8% in 2023, with almost as many using them for work, according to The Pew Research Center and reported by ZDNet.
Pew reports a large number of teachers fear a crisis in education. Teachers worry about students using bots for answers to questions rather than solving problems.
“AI-supported tools hold the possibility to both promote and distort current approaches to teaching and learning,” according to the scholarly journal Daedalus. Does the world have a shortcut that bypasses traditional education?
OpenAI’s answer is a new ChatGPT feature called Study Mode. Study Mode responds to a prompt with a plan of study and ask questions about goals.
The differences with ChatGPT are minor. You only get out of it what you put into it. You still must craft good prompts. Study Mode results from the student’s effort.
Without a suggestion from a student, the bot doesn’t deliver ideas for further learning. Study Mode relies on the “Socratic method” of question and answer.
ChatGPT and other bots have mastered the regurgitation of rote information, which has led to high scores on standardized tests.
The bot can regurgitate information, but it doesn’t what it means to teach someone — a curriculum. This is a high-level understanding of how students learn and how to move through documents, examples, etc. to stir a student’s own ability to ask questions.
Good education involves more questions than answers.
Both Study Mode and normal ChatGPT do not bring a student to the point of asking questions leading to a desire to learn more. There’s little innovation here, a lot of rote lesson plans.
If students are going to use bots for answers, teachers should help them find ways to generate more questions out of the bot instead of policing the use of bots.
Why not help students push the bot with prompts so an entire topic becomes sufficiently complex and the bot responds with more questions rather than simply providing answers?
This could be called The New Curriculum, or “Vibe Pedagogy,” a way to hack the bot to produce something more interesting and stimulating than rote answers.
If a teacher assumes AI is the final authority, education is at risk. But if education is finding out how much there is to know, how many open questions are in a field of study, there is no risk having students use technology to open up more questions.
This is also a way to integrate study of a topic, such as the American Revolution, with the study of the bot. Students are probably going to spend the rest of their adult lives interacting with bots in some way. So get to know the bot’s strengths and limitations.
Bots ace all the standardized exams. There is no point in forcing students to endure spitting out the facts. Instead, teachers should stimulate curiosity and question-asking, which humans still do better than bots.
ZDNet
