One reader wrote with a thoughtful answer to the question of how to structure classes in light of ChatGPT and its variants:
The main attitude here seems to be that academic assignments serve the greatest good by teaching students how to write papers in formal English. If, in this brave new world, students learn to use this new tool to help them put together documents in the right style with the right content, then we’ve done our job. If you get the answer right by using a calculator instead of a slide rule, well, in your eventual career as an engineer, you’ll have access to a calculator, so go for it. Who knows? Maybe gpt chat is taking over the world, and we should teach students how to use it effectively, just as we should teach them how to use calculators effectively, rather than insisting they use slide rules. On the other hand, if students are using this new tool and the results are bad, like in the example of your vice presidents becoming presidents, well, they haven’t achieved the goal of writing a paper with the appropriate content, right? Anyway, let’s judge the results.
That seems to be the direction things are headed, at least for now. It’s a variation of using canned tomatoes in a “homemade” spaghetti sauce. A purist might object that one is building on something already produced, but one person’s sauce will be very different from another’s even if they use the same canned base. Likewise, someone using an AI-generated essay as an outline or prompt might well take it in an entirely different direction, let alone whether they care about fact-checking. As I taught my students, editing is a skill in itself.
On the other hand, this position can only be tenable as long as AI bots are still in a relatively crude early phase. As they improve, they can improve their human sound. When this happens, there may be less room for students (or others) to take ownership of the output. Some professors are already bringing back oral exams as a way to defeat write-o-matic devices. A history professor I know tasks his students with producing podcasts on given topics instead of an article. She reports that they are more fun to listen to and harder for students to fake.
I am not a formal communications specialist, but I am fascinated by the increasingly complex technology that constantly brings us back to oral tradition. In a hundred years, will formal writing be considered picturesque? Perhaps a transition technology that became useless after the transition? I hope not – there’s something to be said for the sustained focus that writing both generates and demands – but the pattern is clear.
If this is true, then one of the tasks of higher education might be to find ways to encourage deeper thinking in ways other than writing. Gamification springs to mind, as do oral exams, projects, and debates. In the Socratic tradition, sustained oral questioning was considered the path to truth. It’s extremely difficult to do well – witness the number of variations on “it is certainly so, Socrates” in the various Platonic dialogues – but when it works, it’s glorious.
As a fan of Susan Cain’s work, I’m bound to note that writing as a medium is particularly suited to introverts. Introverts tend to think before they talk, and writing allows for that. Moving from a culture centered on writing to one based on oral traditions can amplify the already too strong tendency of American culture to reward bluster about substance. But if we can find other ways for smart introverts to contribute — and I’m sure we can — we could avoid inadvertently relegating some of our best minds to the fringes.
Yes, of course, results matter. But the process of getting those results is meant to be educational in itself. The point of assigning a paper is not the paper; it is the struggle that the student goes through to write the paper. Take away the struggle, and you take away the point. Driving the length of a marathon is a lot easier than running it, I suppose, but it’s not quite the same thing.
Wise, worldly readers, have you found any introvert-friendly ways to encourage more thoughtful participation beyond writing? I’d love to hear (in writing, ironically enough) via email to deandad(at)gmail(dot)comon Twitter at @dead or on Mastodon at @deandad at masto (dot) ai.
