A Practical Guide to Using ChatGPT in the Classroom

Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

Like many of my colleagues, I’ve been grappling with how ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs) are impacting teaching and education — especially at the undergraduate level.

Since ChatGPT’s public launch last November, there’s been a flurry of articles predicting educational chaos as students use it to complete assignments and pass AI-generated work off as their own. But there’s also a growing awareness that LLMs have a remarkable capacity to positively transform learning if used creatively.

Over the coming months and years we’re likely to see profound changes in how AI-based technologies like LLMs are used in formal education. Yet navigating the transition to a future where LLMs are used effectively and responsibly in education is not going to be straight forward.

We’re already seeing signs of the challenges here as a growing divide emerges between LLM-savvy students who are experimenting with novel ways of using (and abusing) tools like ChatGPT, and educators who are desperately trying to catch up. As a result, educators are increasingly finding themselves unprepared and poorly equipped to navigate near-real-time innovations in how students are using these tools. And this is only exacerbated where their knowledge of what is emerging is several steps behind that of their students.