ChatGPT is a chatbot with a large language model that can speak in conversational dialogue and produce human-like text. It can help customize resumes and cover letters, brainstorm ideas, explain complex topics, write essays on any topic, and many more things.
George Asimos, the director of writing here at Neumann, believes it is his responsibility to help students embrace new sources that come along and slowly become the future. He said that out of all his students, only one person had even heard about ChatGPT before he mentioned it. He guessed that “Many people may not know about it because it’s not appealing and isn’t image-based.”
He mentions that reading is more of an issue than writing when it comes to literacy. He believes that ChatGPT, in a way, can help reading skills since everything it produces is in written form and not visualized through imagery.
Dr. Caleb Mezzy is a sports management professor who touches on ChatGPT briefly in his courses. He thinks it can benefit his students if used properly with a purpose. Mezzy was able to break down some pros and cons of the use of ChatGPT for students.
He believes that it is a great way to receive quick information when needed. It could also make students reliant on it, however, which would lead to crippling their critical thinking skills. “Although ChatGPT may write a paper for you,” he says, “students still have to fact check it to make sure the information is credible as it isolates information from the web and puts it together.” Mezzy uses the necessity for fact-checking as a teaching point for students to continue to dive deeper into their research, regardless of the source.
I then took it upon myself to go to the writing center and give them two different copies of an old research paper to see if they could spot any differences between my version and ChatGPT’s. When creating the ChatGPT version of my research paper, I just typed in the topic, and it began typing a whole paper on my laptop. It was amazing to see a paper being written in real-time by an AI like it was nothing when I struggle at times just coming up with ideas.
Erica O’Mahony, the director of the writing center looked over the two papers and noticed some differences immediately. She said that she could tell immediately which paper was written by ChatGPT because “There were no mistakes in grammar and punctuation that AI can identify.”
She added that there were “no citations, missteps in organization, and almost two paragraphs that were completely identical.”
She then said that my paper “was more conversational, with citations (where the punctuation was incorrect), and, while there was minor repetition, no two ideas were 100% identical in phrasing.”
Overall, Mahoney stated, “In terms of writing, the AI draft was better, but if I were a professor I would doc major points for no citations or references (plagiarism), repetition, and jumbled organization,” For the student draft, she said, “I would doc points some points for grammar, sentence structure, and repetition/organization.”
She concluded that “It would be interesting to see how each would be graded by a professor, but it is obvious who did what between the AI and the student.”
Students may try to use ChatGPT as a way to cheat, but over time professors would just start to restructure the way their assignments are crafted to force students to think critically.
This type of technology is here to stay for years to come, so why not teach students how to use it responsibly and be productive with it in the future? Professors at Neumann seem ready to take advantage of the technology and adapt it to benefit students.
