By Victoria Rivera
ChatGPT is not only one of the most advanced artificial intelligence software out there, it’s one of the most accessible as well. It’s adless, primarily free and has little over a 4,000-character limit for all posts. It’s so sophisticated it’s used to analyze code, grammar check, write business emails, and now can be used to write students’ essays for them.
A blessing for students and a bane for professors, ChatGPT is now in hot water for making the ability to get away with cheating easier than ever before. Rather than having to learn information, analyze it and communicate the findings, ChatGPT can do all those steps for students. Feed it a source with the right prompt, and it finishes an essay for you: eliminating the need to actually learn the concept yourself.
Concerns about academic dishonesty are at the forefront of conversations, but it extends beyond the ethical issues of plagiarizing AI. In stealing the AI’s words, a student’s development is hindered, especially during formative years.
“...In lower education, that’s really when your creativity forms and you should really do something on your own just to see if you can do it and really form your personality. You just need time to develop,” said Kamron Holley, a third-year finance major. “If you rely on AI too early on, I think it can be detrimental.”
In a study done by Pew Research Center, only 6% of teachers in these grades believe the benefits outweigh the potential harm. The majority are more cynical about its effects, with 32% believing the negative and positives are equal with an additional 25% believing the harm vastly outweighs the good.
Of these demographics, it’s the middle and high school teachers that are most concerned about AI’s more detrimental effects. Due to the recency of AI’s use in the classroom, it’s harder to determine the long term effects of its use on younger learners.
In spite of the building contention, there is reason to doubt that AI is detrimental in the classroom. For all the buzz about AI-use being on the rise among college students, an anonymous survey by Stanford Graduate School suggests 60-70% of students cheat at some point, a statistic that hasn‘t changed since the introduction of ChatGPT. AI hasn’t resulted in more plagiarism: it’s only another tool for plagiarists to use.
Surveys at Barry University reflect a similar sentiment. Of those who responded to the poll, almost 70% of students confessed to using AI, with 84% believing that it overall benefits their education. Only a small, 10% indicated that Barry should ban AI in the classroom altogether.
Professor Celeste Landeros, a humanities professor, reflects the views of most Barry students.
“AI represented one of the biggest changes in humanity. It’s bigger even than the printing press, some calling it the fourth Industrial Revolution,” she said. “We’re all going to have to use it, even in our jobs, and our personal lives...Having kids not prepared to use AI means we’re not meeting the challenge of this enormous change in society.”
The concern for Landeros is “because it’s so new, no one knows the correct way to use it yet.”
Barry administrators have already begun preparing its faculty for the changing landscape. In April 2023, Barry ’s new virtual Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) hosted a one-hour presentation for faculty on “Teaching in the Era of ChatGPT: Facing the Future” where Dr. Sarah Lewis, associate professor of social work, shared best practices for integrating AI tools into course curriculum.
Then, one month later, Barry updated its student academic dishonesty policy to read:
The use of unauthorized materials or technology, including the unauthorized use of Artificial Intelligence technology (AI), is considered cheating. Plagiarism is defined as the use, without proper acknowledgement, of the ideas, phrases, sentences, or larger units of discourse from another source. Plagiarism includes the unauthorized use of text generated by AI, the unauthorized copying of program code written by another person or generated by AI, the unauthorized copying of software, and the violation of copyright laws.
In Landeros’ classes, once the drafts of student papers are submitted, she said knows she is going to see some telltale signs of AI involvement, what she calls: “very nicely written generalities.”
While she hopes to teach her students how to explore it, she doesn’t know exactly what to do with it, “but it can’t be to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Though there are concerns to be had about AI’s long-term effects in academics, the speed at which it’s evolving makes it impossible to entirely shove it out of the classrooms.
Though intimidating, AI doesn’t have to replace people or be used as an easy cheat code. In the end, it’s still a tool that can hinder or bolster a student’s abilities when applied correctly.
“I think it should be used to generate ideas, but you should put those ideas into your own words. You can use it for an outline, but that’s about it,” said Holley.
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