CAS and AI – new guide offers classroom help

How will you approach AI in your classroom in the new academic year?

If you’re looking for advice about ChatGPT in the classroom, or want to be able to support colleagues, in the new term, CAS has published a free guide on how to use ChatGPT.

Computing teacher Evan Dunne has written ‘ChatGPT for Teachers’ and the guide is part of our free library of resource materials and is available to download here. 

The guide explores how to use ChatGPT to improve and develop teaching and covers topics such as;

• identifying AI-generated work,
• setting clear guidelines and expectations,
• educating students on the risks and ethics of using AI-generated work,
• the use of AI-generated work for educational purposes.

“The capabilities of AI chatbots in transforming education and assessment are only beginning to be recognised by schools and teachers,” said Evan.
    
“Beyond the ability to generate an adequate essay, ChatGPT also has immense potential for revolutionising learning. But a significant knowledge gap exists among the teaching community regarding how to use ChatGPT and its competitors,” said Evan. “Teachers are navigating the uncharted waters of these powerful technologies.”

Evan’s ChatGPT for Teachers guide aims to equip teachers with strategies to tackle the rise of AI in education.

“As a tool, ChatGPT is incredibly versatile. However, teachers are of course concerned about the possibility of students using AI to generate work that appears to be original,” said Evan.

He explained that signs of AI-generated work may include a lack of coherence or complete understanding of a topic, as well as odd phrasing resulting in unnatural sentence structures. And training and teacher skill is also likely to improve and develop.
    
“Although AI detection software is still in its early stages and not always effective at detecting plagiarism or AI-generated content, teacher training courses in this area are likely to become more prevalent as educators seek to better identify and prevent plagiarism,” he said.

We’d love to know what your students think about this topic – you could show your class the recording of the debate (or some clips) and facilitate a similar discussion amongst your students.  Find out more here

Teacher Training and AI

Julia Adamson, MD for education and public benefit, at BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT has called for awareness about AI to be included in teacher training.

She said: “Calculators used to be banned from exams but are now mandatory. We need to bring machine learning into mainstream teaching practice, otherwise children will be using AI for homework unsupervised without understanding what it’s telling them.”

Read more here