Adapting to the ChatGPT era in education

Adapting to the ChatGPT era in education

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ChatGPT has rapidly begun to infiltrate K-12 classrooms nationwide. A recent survey by study.com found that nearly 90 percent of students admitted to using OpenAI’s chatbot in some home-related capacity, and more than 25 percent of teachers have already caught a student cheating using the chatbot.

The propensity for students to use ChatGPT to cheat has raised concern amongst educators and even prompted several school districts, ranging from New York City Public Schools to the Los Angeles Unified School District, to issue a ban of the chatbot. However, cheating with ChatGPT is just a symptom of a larger problem in education: a focus on rote memorization and regurgitation of information.

The cheating-related concerns are warranted, but many appear to overlook a key point: students opting to cheat on homework, essays, or exams is not a new phenomenon. Companies like Chegg have become multi-billion dollar platforms, which is mainly attributable to students seeking on-demand access to textbook and exam answers. Before ChatGPT was publicly available, the International Center for Academic Integrity found that 95 percent of high schoolers participated in some form of cheating.

This begs a two-fold question: why do students cheat in the first place, and why is it so easy to cheat? For both, the simple answer traces back to the current approach to curriculum and assessment.

Joe Janey, Dual MBA-MPP Candidate, Fuqua School of Business and Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University

Joe Janey is a dual MBA-MPP candidate at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Sanford School of Public Policy. While focused on the intersection of education and technology policy, Joe is passionate about harnessing the power of education technology to augment the education ecosystem and create new pathways for student success and mobility.

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