The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Chatbots are ‘new reality in education.’ How one teacher is embracing it.
Just one year ago, a fascinating new educational tool made a splashy and public debut: Generative pretrained transformers, or GPTS, also called chatbots, bots, Large Language Models and the generic “AI.” I first became fascinated by their capabilities in 2019; as an artistic project I wrote a self-published novella called “Trash Novel,” using something called CHATGPT-2. In the story, generative AI and sentient dogs and a few lucky humans work together in a near-future Riverside to remove trash and pollution from the Earth. A recycling story using a tool that recycles old writing to generate new writing.
Back then, I found it helpful to complete a sentence I started or to crank out some far-out stream of consciousness style flash fiction. Its use on that project was not a time saver. Rather it provided a more robust and outcome-driven brainstorming session. While it did not write “ready to publish” fiction, it did drive narrative perspective and plot by injecting random statements that, out of context, could be mistaken for thinking, even wisdom.
Within four years, that single beta product from an obscure nonprofit called Openai evolved into a blisteringly fastpaced, knowledge industry dominated by a handful of key players.
Ai-driven tools are now commonly referred to by their corporate brand name (i.e., Open AI’S “CHATGPT,” Microsoft’s “Co-pilot,” Google’s “Gemini,” Anthropic’s “Claude”). Today I hear about its use not just in my classrooms, but in every single classroom. There is not a teacher or friend in college I’ve spoken to who does not have an AI story to share. The discussions around its use range from the boastful to the conspiratorial.
Spring of 2023 the discussion (and use) of AI found its way into my conversations with students and peers at the colleges at which I teach. To a person, we are trying to figure out how this technology can and should be used. While I respect those who are still in the “should we or shouldn’t we” phase of technological adoption, I’m accepting GPTS as the new reality in education. The content and the conduct of my classroom already reflects this. I have assignments that require students to use a GPT, and a grading rubric that helps students document and share their GPT usage transparently. We practice using these tools in class and share the results. My students get full credit on assignments for attempting use and telling me in detail about how good or bad it was to work with these tools.
In regards to transparency, I’ve changed how I conduct class. We don’t sit lecture-style anymore. Why have the students facing me? I literally don’t have the answers about AI. Students and teachers have to work together to stay current on innovations and decide how to proceed successfully in this new academic environment. I arrange desks into small clusters so they can learn together, then teach each other.
My job is not to teach them AI or how to write with AI. The truth is that a GPT tool, with some prompting and training, can already do that. And now it is a time-saver, helping me craft an hourlong student-centric learning activity. As an adjunct who does not get compensated for work I do outside the classroom, this helps me innovate as I’m teaching. My job as teacher is to provide a focus on discussions and problem solving by crafting narrow critical thinking prompts alongside short articles related to GPTS and impacts of AI adoption across our culture. For students, they get what they want: Advice and training on how to use these tools in college so they can learn, graduate, and avoid getting into trouble.
I don’t know what the future holds for GPTS in education. I’ll avoid prognostication because the advances happen so quickly that whatever I predict while writing this column will be overshadowed by new discoveries before its publication. But rather than just shrugging my shoulders and waiting to see what happens, I’ve spent this last year asking every student I teach what they think. I wanted to understand how they want to use AI in college, and how schools create an environment to support their vision of the future. Their responses led me to this open-borders approach to GPTS in college, and I’m optimistic that every person that attends my class will be able to read and write in a world where knowledge will be housed and shaped largely by our applications of AI, and the values we bring to our interactions with one another. Despite all this innovation, honesty is still the best policy when it comes to meeting the needs of today’s knowledge seekers, as well as their teachers, and the tools they use.
Larry Burns is a writer and artist who draws inspiration from the heady mixture of sights, sounds, peoples, and places of the Inland Empire. His current outdoor assemblage project funded by California Arts Council and Creative Inland Socal is called “Making Refuge.” You can visit this interactive art project daily at Trujillo Adobe and Garcia Center for the Arts through June. Go to larryburns.net for schedule and open workshop dates.