We asked several high schools and universities about their approach to ChatGPT

Jan

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What Michaelhouse, Pretoria Boys, and universities are doing about ChatGPT

The existence of AI language models is a reality that learning institutions in South Africa cannot ignore.

Students have access to large language model artificial intelligence "chatbots", such as ChatGPT, which can perform a range of tasks students might find useful in completing assignments.
 
konfab said:
LLMs like ChatGPT are showing how stupid and inefficient education has been.
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maybe it will adapt, like those of us lucky enough to use Encarta or the Early Internet to do assignments.
I mean it worked for a while, and then you actually had to do some work and not copy pasta from Encarta for every project.

same thing will happen here, maybe it will even make teachers less lazy and force them to read everything fully.
 
Jet-Fighter7700 said:
maybe it will adapt, like those of us lucky enough to use Encarta or the Early Internet to do assignments.
I mean it worked for a while, and then you actually had to do some work and not copy pasta from Encarta for every project.

same thing will happen here, maybe it will even make teachers less lazy and force them to read everything fully.
Click to expand...
It will mean that they will need to actually ask questions that require a high level of understanding of the subject matter.

ChatGPT is invaluable for this, because educators can use it to gauge whether they are asking the right questions or not. If ChatGPT can answer it properly, you are not asking the correct question. If ChatGPT cannot give the answer, then you are asking the right question.
 
konfab said:
It will mean that they will need to actually ask questions that require a high level of understanding of the subject matter.
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my point exactly, they will need to up their game in a big way to get past Chat GPT
and every student using it to auto-generate answers.
 
konfab said:
It will mean that they will need to actually ask questions that require a high level of understanding of the subject matter.

ChatGPT is invaluable for this, because educators can use it to gauge whether they are asking the right questions or not. If ChatGPT can answer it properly, you are not asking the correct question. If ChatGPT cannot give the answer, then you are asking the right question.
Click to expand...

But you will always need to build knowledge starting somewhere - which is where the problems come in. Even more so when chatGPT gets more and more capable as it starts to integrate into speciality AIs.

There is a much easier way to solve this - weight assignments less over in person examinations/trials. Anyone who is using chatGTP exclusively will be easy to spot.
 
2023 said:
There is a much easier way to solve this - weight assignments less over in person examinations/trials. Anyone who is using chatGTP exclusively will be easy to spot.
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so less jolling and more studying, sounds like a good idea, till they invent Robots that replace teachers.
 
Quite frankly nobody gives a flying Feck of the opinions of South African university staff and students.
 
Polymathic said:
Quite frankly nobody gives a flying Feck of the opinions of South African university staff and students.
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South African university staff, students, and some of the 60 million odd South Africans & 1.2 billion Africans etc.
 
konfab said:
If a glorified text predictor can answer the questions you are asking, you are asking the wrong questions.

LLMs like ChatGPT are showing how stupid and inefficient education has been.
Click to expand...
Comes more from parroting the same questions for which the answers are out there. As soon as you ask for critical thinking the language models fail. I think they are a good starting point from where to do your research but institutions should place a bigger emphasis of thinking so that their effect is negligible and using them to provide answers becomes a gamble students don't want to take.
 
Jet-Fighter7700 said:
my point exactly, they will need to up their game in a big way to get past Chat GPT
and every student using it to auto-generate answers.
Click to expand...
There is always an adjustment period. The same way we now use calculators at school, they realised that it was less important to do large maths sums in your head, and more to show actual reasoning.

I was in the situation where the jump to the home PC, then the internet and cellphones all happened while I was at school.

It was ground breaking that you all of sudden, had a bunch of CD's that could replace an entire library, at home. Then a few years later I remember the first time someone just printed out an entire website and presented it as a project. The teachers knew it was BS but didn't even know what it was. By the time I was in matric it was the first year they had to ban cellphones from the exam, because there were kids who actually owned them.

Schools will adjust very quickly, I have already noticed that many of my daughters projects are done at school. Which makes loads more sense, I'm sure that many of her classmates don't have a home PC with parents assisting on every home work item. So its only fair that they are all on the same level and have access to the same resources.
 
I used this. Who remember Werled Spektrum?

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Sigh, boys high is definitely on the wrong side of this.
Here comes a topic for the old boys.

Technology is unstoppable, we need to adapt around it. Trying to block it is foolish at best.
 
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