this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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High school history teacher here. It’s changed how I do assessments. I’ve used it to rewrite all of the multiple choice/short answer assessments that I do. Being able to quickly create different versions of an assessment has helped me limit instances of cheating, but also to quickly create modified versions for students who require that (due to IEPs or whatever).
The cool thing that I’ve been using it for is to create different types of assessments that I simply didn’t have the time or resources to create myself. For instance, I’ll have it generate a writing passage making a historical argument, but I’ll have AI make the argument inaccurate or incorrectly use evidence, etc. The students have to refute, support, or modify the passage.
Due to the risk of inaccuracies and hallucination I always 100% verify any AI generated piece that I use in class. But it’s been a game changer for me in education.
I should also add that I fully inform students and administrators that I’m using AI. Whenever I use an assessment that is created with AI I indicate with a little “Created with ChatGPT” tag. As a history teacher I’m a big believer in citing sources :)
How has this been received?
I imagine that pretty soon using ChatGPT is going to be looked down upon like using Wikipedia as a source
I would never accept a student’s use of Wikipedia as a source. However, it’s a great place to go initially to get to grips with a topic quickly. Then you can start to dig into different primary and secondary sources.
Chat GPT is the same. I would never use the content it makes without verifying that content first.
Is it not already? I've found it to be far less reliable than Wikipedia.
This is why I read through everything I use to make sure it’s accurate.
Well the people that use it know that, but for the average person, chatgpt still has a high reputation
Is it fair to give different students different wordings of the same questions? If one wording is more confusing than another could it impact their grade?
I had professors do different wordings for questions throughout college, I never encountered a professor or TA that wouldn’t clarify if asked, and, generally, the amount of confusing questions evened out across all of the versions, especially over a semester. They usually aren’t doing it to trick students, they just want to make it harder for one student to look at someone else’s test.
There is a risk of it negatively impacting students, but encouraging students to ask for clarification helps a ton.
My professors would randomize the order of the questions instead.
I have had professors that essentially create chiral A & B versions and also randomize the order. Never underestimate the amount of effort a lazy student will go through to cheat.
I use ChatGPT to create banks of questions that are aligned to the essential topics that I need students to learn. Then I randomly assign the same number of questions to each student from each essential topic. I give the students the list of topics to focus their studying on.
I also have other “categories” that form their final grade, things like participation and homework assignments. So any marginal unfairness that might result from randomized test questions is more that made up for over the course of everything I grade them on.
Sure it could but the same issue is present with one question. Some students will get the wording or find it easy others may not. Having a test in groups to limit cheating is very common and never led to any problems as far as my anecdotal evidence goes.
You’re increasingly the odds by changing the wording. I don’t see why it’s necessary. Just randomize the order of the questions would suffice.
I'm a special education teacher and today I was tasked with writing a baseline assessment for the use of an iPad. Was expecting it to take all day. I tried starting with ChatGPT and it spat out a pretty good one. I added to it and edited it to make it more appropriate for our students, and put it in our standard format, and now I'm done, about an hour after I started.
I did lose 10 minutes to walking round the deserted college (most teachers are gone for the holidays) trying to find someone to share my joy with.
I wish I had that much opportunity to write (or fabricate) my own teaching material. I'm in a standardized testing hellscape where almost every month there's yet another standardized test or preparation for one.
It’s one of the fascinating paradoxes of education that the more you teach to standardized tests, the worse test results tend to be. Improved test scores are a byproduct of strong teaching - they shouldn’t be the only focus.
Teaching is every bit as much an art as it is a science and straight-jacketing teachers with canned curricula only results in worse test scores and a deteriorated school experience for students. I don’t understand how there are admins out there that still operate like this. The failures of No Child Left Behind mean we’ve known this for at least a decade.