The Future of Learning: How AI-Powered ChatGPT is Changing Education
Written and compiled by Tim Foote, 24/2/2023.
If you haven’t heard by now, ChatGPT is taking the world by storm. It is already transforming how we use technology in many areas of life, and has set the record for the fastest adopted “app” on the internet so far (100 million users in just 2 months). But before we go into the why’s and how’s, let’s explore what ChatGPT is and is not…
Putting the GPT in Chat
GPT
What is GPT? GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. It’s a type of Large Language Model (LLM) that uses artificial intelligence to generate text. Specifically, GPT models are trained on large amounts of data, such as books, articles, and other written materials, to learn the patterns and structures of language. It is an evolution of BERT (bidirectional encoder representations from transformers) which was invented by Google in 2018 to enhance their search and translation capabilities.
Once a GPT model is trained, it can be used to generate new text based on a given prompt or context. For example, if you input a sentence into a GPT model, it can generate a paragraph or essay based on that sentence. This makes GPT models extremely versatile, as they can be used for a wide range of applications, such as language translation, text summarisation, and even creative writing.
In recent years, GPT models have become increasingly powerful and sophisticated, thanks in part to advancements in machine learning and natural language processing. The most recent iteration of GPT, GPT-3, is one of the largest and most powerful language models in existence, with the ability to generate human-like text and complete a wide range of language tasks.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI that uses machine learning to understand and respond to human language in a conversational format. It works by processing large amounts of text data and using that information to generate responses to user input.
In practice, ChatGPT can be used to perform a variety of tasks, from answering questions and providing recommendations, to generating creative writing, translations and even chatbot interactions. For example, in customer service, ChatGPT can be used to provide quick and accurate responses to common queries, reducing the workload of human customer service representatives.
In healthcare, ChatGPT has been used to analyse medical data and provide personalised treatment recommendations based on a patient’s unique medical history. In finance, ChatGPT can help customers manage their finances by providing real-time investment advice based on market trends.
ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can be used in a variety of industries to automate and streamline processes, while providing high-quality and personalised responses to customers and users. However, it is important to note that ChatGPT is not a sentient being and does not possess consciousness, emotions, or personal experiences. It is also not a substitute for human interaction or professional services such as medical, legal, or financial advice. Additionally, ChatGPT is not infallible and may produce errors or inaccuracies in its responses.
ChatGPT in Education
What it won’t do
There’s a lot of uncertainty circulating our sphere about what are the potentials and pitfalls on allow something like ChatGPT into our Education system. Let’s explore what ChatGPT is NOT:
While ChatGPT is a powerful tool that has many potential benefits for education, it’s important to recognize what it is not. Firstly, ChatGPT is not a substitute for human teachers. While it can assist in providing students with information and answering their questions, it cannot provide the personalized attention and care that a human teacher can.
Secondly, it’s important to note that ChatGPT is not a replacement for the established curriculum. While it can assist with learning and provide additional resources, it is not designed to completely replace the existing syllabus.
Thirdly, ChatGPT is not a tool for students to cheat on exams or assignments. While it can provide information and assistance, it’s important for students to learn and complete their work on their own.
Additionally, ChatGPT is not a substitute for human interaction. While it can provide students with information and answer their questions, it cannot provide the social and emotional connections that are essential for human growth and development.
It’s also important to note that ChatGPT is not a one-size-fits-all solution for education. While it can assist with learning, it’s important to recognize that each student has unique needs and learning styles that require individual attention and care.
Lastly, it’s important to recognize that ChatGPT is not a definitive source of truth for information. While it has the potential to provide incorrect answers and be very confident about it, this is a problem being worked on currently by OpenAI and others in order to improve factuality, as seen in Microsoft’s implementation of GPT in Bing Chat.
ChatGPT’s potential
ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionise Education in a way that may not have been thought as possible, until now. Following are some examples of what ChatGPT can do for Education.
ChatGPT can assist in personalized learning, by generating unique learning materials for students based on their needs and preferences. It can help students develop their writing skills by providing real-time feedback and suggestions for improvement, and provide an immersive and interactive experience for language learners by generating natural-sounding dialogue in a foreign language.
Additionally, ChatGPT can help students with their research projects by generating relevant summaries, identifying key concepts, and providing additional sources for further study. For test preparation, ChatGPT can generate practice questions and provide feedback on students’ answers.
Through learning analytics, ChatGPT can analyze student performance data to identify areas where students may need additional support and generate personalized recommendations for improvement. It can also help students learn a new language by generating conversation prompts and providing instant feedback on their responses, as well as translate sentences and provide pronunciation guides.
In terms of curriculum development, ChatGPT can help educators refine course materials by analyzing student learning data and recommending changes. It can also generate new lesson plans and activities. As a virtual tutor, ChatGPT can support students outside the classroom by answering their questions, providing feedback on assignments, and offering study tips and strategies.
Lastly, ChatGPT can help create accessible learning materials for students with disabilities by generating audio descriptions of visual content or providing transcripts of lectures for students with hearing impairments.
ChatGPT for Corporate Staff
Our Education system wouldn’t exist without the support of our corporate branches. ChatGPT can provide many benefits for knowledge workers and admin staff alike, which include:
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Writing Assistance: ChatGPT can assist staff members in drafting emails, reports, and other documents. For example, a staff member can input a brief summary of the report they need to write and receive suggestions and feedback from ChatGPT on how to improve it. This can save time and improve the quality of written communication.
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Training and Development: ChatGPT can be used to create engaging and interactive training materials for staff members. For example, ChatGPT can be used to develop interactive scenarios that allow staff members to practice new skills or interact with simulated customers or clients.
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Customer Service: ChatGPT can be used to provide customer service support to students, parents, and other stakeholders. For example, ChatGPT can be programmed to provide quick answers to frequently asked questions or to provide support for basic technical issues.
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Time Management: ChatGPT can be used to help staff members manage their time more effectively. For example, ChatGPT can be programmed to provide reminders for important deadlines, send notifications for upcoming meetings, and suggest ways to improve time management skills.
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Programming: ChatGPT can help programmers in various ways, such as suggesting code snippets, offering solutions to coding problems, and providing explanations for programming concepts. For example, a programmer can input a specific coding problem into ChatGPT, and it can generate suggestions for how to approach the problem or even a code snippet that can solve it. ChatGPT can also offer explanations for complex programming concepts, making it a valuable resource for those who are just starting out in their programming journey or for those who need a quick refresher on a particular topic.
GPT capabilities
Furthermore, by developing solutions using GPT API’s and algorithms, it opens up even more possibilities:
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Automated report writing: GPT-powered tools can generate summaries, insights, and recommendations based on data gathered from various sources, helping to streamline the report writing process and provide more accurate and detailed analysis.
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Virtual assistants: GPT-powered chatbots or virtual assistants can help administrative staff handle routine tasks such as scheduling appointments, answering frequently asked questions, and directing inquiries to the appropriate departments.
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Smart content management: GPT-powered content management systems can analyse and tag documents, images, and videos, making it easier for knowledge workers to find and use relevant information.
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Personalised learning: GPT-powered algorithms can analyse student performance data to identify strengths, weaknesses, and learning styles, and provide personalised recommendations for coursework and learning resources.
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Fraud detection: GPT-powered analytics tools can detect and flag suspicious financial transactions or student records, helping to prevent fraud and ensure the integrity of the education system.
Smarter meetings
We will see more of the functionality outlined above coming down the line as Microsoft integrates GPT functionality into their Office/365 products. They have already announced an integration with the new Teams Premium features. Here are some of the new features we can expect in the future:
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Intelligent Recap: With the intelligent recap feature in Teams Premium, you can save time by getting automatically generated meeting notes, recommended tasks, and personalised highlights. This feature can help you stay up-to-date on important information even if you missed the meeting.
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Personalised Timeline Markers: With personalised timeline markers, you can easily catch up on what you missed in a meeting recording. The timeline markers call out when you joined or left the meeting and expand to include when your name was mentioned or when a screen was shared.
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Speaker Timeline Markers: In addition to personalised timeline markers, speaker timeline markers show you who spoke during the meeting and when they spoke. This feature can be intelligently organised by who you work most closely with, so you never miss feedback shared by your manager in a meeting again.
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AI-generated Notes: With the power of GPT-3.5, AI-generated notes can be automatically created and provided after the meeting. This feature generates key points and takeaways so you can focus on the discussion during the meeting without worrying about taking notes.
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Live Captions and Translations: Live captions in Teams can be turned on for real-time captions in the spoken language. The feature also offers live translations (for captions) from 40 spoken languages, powered by AI, making meetings more productive and effortless, particularly for people who speak different languages. This feature is available in Teams Premium and can save money on additional real-time meeting translation services.
Sounds great, but how?
ChatGPT is available via https://chat.openai.com. The official blog post announcement from OpenAI, with more information, is available here.
Usage
The responses you get from ChatGPT/GPT models are directly associated with the input that it receives. These are called “prompts”, which has itself spawned a whole new area of research called “prompt engineering”. ChatGPT allows you to reference the same content/context that you provide to it within a chat session, but it will not remember it long term or be able to reference it via other chat sessions (at the time of writing this).
Prompt Engineering
Prompt engineering is the process of creating prompts, or questions, that can be input into AI models like ChatGPT to generate responses that align with specific goals or tasks. It involves crafting prompts that are clear, concise, and well-structured to elicit the most accurate and useful response from the AI model. The prompt can include specific keywords or phrases to guide the AI’s response, as well as any necessary context or constraints to ensure the response is relevant and appropriate for the given task. Good prompt engineering is important for achieving optimal results from AI models, and involves a combination of technical skill and knowledge of the desired outcomes.
Example prompts
Here are some simple examples of prompts that could be used with ChatGPT:
For Students:
"Can you help me understand this concept better?"
"What are some strategies to improve my writing?"
"I'm struggling with my math homework; can you walk me through some practice problems?"
For Teachers:
"What are some effective teaching strategies for a remote classroom?"
"How can I help students who are struggling with engagement?"
"Can you suggest some resources for teaching critical thinking skills?"
"Write a short story about our modern times in the style of Shakespeare"
"Explain virtual reality like I'm a 5th grader"
For Administrators/Staff:
"How can we improve communication between teachers and parents?"
"What are some effective ways to streamline administrative tasks?"
"Can you provide guidance on how to support teachers with professional development opportunities?"
For Corporate Staff:
"I have a lot of emails to go through, can you help me prioritise them based on urgency?"
"I'm not sure what the best approach is for organising my team's project management, can you provide some suggestions?"
"I'm having trouble summarising this report, can you help me create a concise summary for the executive team?"
"I need to write a report on the impact of remote work on productivity, can you help me research and compile data?"
"I need to set up an onboarding process for new hires, can you help me create a step-by-step guide?"
"I'm struggling to keep up with all my tasks and deadlines, can you suggest a task management system that would work for me?"
"I need to create a training program for my team, can you help me design a curriculum?"
You can also create complex questions that have built in context for how you want ChatGPT to respond.
A more complex prompt for ChatGPT might be:
"Hi ChatGPT, I am a grade 9 student struggling with understanding the concepts of algebra. Can you provide me with step-by-step guidance on how to solve algebraic equations, and suggest some helpful resources to further my understanding? Also, could you recommend any fun activities or games that can help me practice algebra and prepare for my upcoming test?"
"I am a high school teacher trying to create a lesson plan that engages students and teaches them critical thinking skills through the study of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Can you provide me with several engaging lesson plan ideas, resources, and examples of critical thinking activities that align with the Australian Curriculum Standards?"
"I am a software developer working on a natural language processing project and I need to fine-tune my model to improve its performance on a specific task. Can you provide me with a set of hyperparameters to use in training, as well as a list of relevant datasets and pre-processing steps to use for this task?"
The possibilities are endless! One of the best collections of free prompts is available in the awesome-chatgpt-prompts repo on GitHub. It includes prompts that make ChatGPT act as different personas, like Teacher, Translator, Technical writer, etc.
For developers
OpenAI has an API Playground which can be used to discover and test the GPT API features and models that they have available.
The AI industry’s favourite programming language is Python, as the majority of Natural Language Processing modules and tools have been developed using this language. Here’s a snippet of what an API request and response might look like:
import os
import openai
openai.api_key = os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")
prompt_text = ("Write me a powershell script to call OpenAI's text-davinci-003 API")
response = openai.Completion.create(
model="text-davinci-003",
prompt=prompt_text,
temperature=0.7,
max_tokens=256,
top_p=1,
frequency_penalty=0,
presence_penalty=0
)
print (response)
There are many other use cases and models that can be queried for certain types of functions. More can be discovered via the API Playground.
Moving forward
Future advances
ChatGPT is based off of the GPT 3.5 model developed by OpenAI. It has certain limitations, such as the amount of text it can consume and respond with in any given conversation. The next iteration, GPT-4, is not that far away and is expected to increase the total amount of textual data from 4k tokens (think word count), up to 32k tokens. This means that it will have the potential to write a full screen play or essay based off of a single prompt.
The technology is moving fast and being adopted by big players in industry across the globe. There’s no doubt that ChatGPT and other GPT models are revolutionising the way we do things, not just in Education but in all areas of life.
ChatGPT is currently one of the best ways to interact with a Large Language Model, but there are other initiatives and products being built as you are reading this. DoE has the potential to be a leader in the adoption of this technology, and to build our own GPT-based chatbots and personal assistants which conform to various legislative and policy requirements.
Collaboration
Collaboration is key to making the most of ChatGPT’s potential in education. To use ChatGPT in a responsible and effective manner, it’s important that government stakeholders, educators, and AI developers work together. ChatGPT can be a valuable tool to support human teachers and improve the overall education system. With the use of AI, educators can save time and effort, leaving them with more time to focus on personalised interactions with students. By partnering with ChatGPT, teachers can use the tool to provide more comprehensive and personalised feedback, and create content for students tailored to their individual needs.
AI developers can work with educators to ensure that ChatGPT is being used in the most effective way possible. Developers can create chatbots that are specifically designed to support educators in their work, helping to streamline administrative tasks, or automate simple tasks, allowing teachers to focus on areas where they can add the most value, such as providing guidance and support for individual students.
Ultimately, it is important for all stakeholders to come together and use ChatGPT as a tool to help build a better education system. Collaboration can help ensure that the use of ChatGPT is ethical, responsible, and effective, and has the potential to help educators and students alike.
Call to action
To all government stakeholders in the education industry, we encourage you to consider the potential benefits of integrating ChatGPT into your education departments. The use of AI in education can help support teachers, students, and other staff, as well as improve the overall educational experience.
If you are interested in exploring the use of AI in education, we suggest the following next steps:
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Start by researching the different AI tools and technologies available for use in education, including ChatGPT and other language models.
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Connect with other education leaders who have implemented AI in their classrooms, and learn from their experiences.
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Consider partnering with AI developers to customise AI tools to meet the unique needs of your education department.
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Ensure that any AI implementation is done responsibly and with a focus on ethical considerations, including data privacy and bias.
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Provide ongoing training and support for educators to help them understand and effectively use AI tools in their teaching.
We hope that these suggestions will help you take the next steps towards exploring the potential of ChatGPT and AI in education. Let’s work together to create a more innovative and effective educational system for all.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ChatGPT represents a powerful tool for the education sector, capable of enhancing student learning, supporting teachers, and streamlining administrative tasks. As we continue to face the challenges of an ever-evolving educational landscape, it is essential that we embrace new technologies such as ChatGPT to help us work smarter and improve outcomes for our students. By working collaboratively with government stakeholders, educators, and AI developers, we can ensure that ChatGPT is used in a responsible and effective manner, and that we are making the most of its potential to transform education for the better. Let’s embrace the future and create a brighter tomorrow for our students.
Disclaimer
This article was writing with the assistance of ChatGPT, and contains information which was inspired by the work of David Shapiro in his video AI in Education, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0.