OpenAI releases education guidelines for ChatGPT

ChatGPT creator, OpenAI, has published an official guide for teachers using its chatbot in their classrooms.

The “Teaching with AI” guide is intended to assist educators in getting started with the tool and to support student learning, alongside some background information on how ChatGPT works and an explanation of some of its limitations.

The blog post provides real-life use cases by professors such as using the tool as a stand-in for a particular persona such as a debate partner, a recruiter interviewing them for a job, or a new boss who might deliver feedback in a specific way.

One teacher taking this example to her students, Helen Crompton, professor of instructional technology at Old Dominion, said: “Exploring information in a conversational setting helps students understand their material with added nuance and new perspective.”

Fran Bellas, a professor at Universidade da Coruña in Spain, recommended fellow teachers use the chatbot to help craft quizzes, exams, and lesson plans.

“If you go to ChatGPT and ask it to create five-question exams about electric circuits, the results are very fresh. You can take these ideas and make them your own,” said Bellas.

The guide also suggests that non-English speakers ‘talk to’ ChatGPT to help practice English conversations and improve their English writing.

While AI is not always credible and accurate, teachers are using this to their advantage to encourage students to apply their critical thinking skills to determine whether they should trust the answer, and confirm it with other primary sources.

High school computer science teacher at American International School in Chennai, India, said the goal with this is “to help [students] understand the importance of constantly working on their original critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity skills”.

Edtech platforms have already been catching on to the effectiveness of ChatGPT as a tool. For example, RADA Business, says that it recently asked it to design a ‘RADA Business’ programme, and it has proven to “serve as a great starting point for inspiration”.

Plus, edtech platform Degreed, is also experimenting with the chatbot – “because of privacy concerns around ChatGPT and to avoid the risk of sharing proprietary information in the public domain, we mostly use ChatGPT to ask for information, suggestions, and to summarise content,” its CDIO, Chetna Mahajan, explains.

As students start heading back to school, cyber security professionals are warning the education sector to be more vigilant.

Last September, the US saw Michigan’s South Redford school district hit by a cyberattack that closed schools for two days, and the UK saw six schools hit by cyberattacks.

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