Windsor principal says Chat GPT could be a tool for students and teachers this semester

School is back in next week and teachers will be on the lookout for assignments written with artificial intelligence (AI) programs like ChatGPT. 

ChatGPT is an AI language program that takes prompts and generates texts. Last year it became popular with students as a way to write essays and assignments. 

Doug Sadler, principal at St. Michael's Adult Catholic High School in Windsor, taught a professional development session last February on how to identify when something is written by AI and how to use language programs properly. 

"You can try to block them, you can try to keep them out, but they're being used," he said on CBC's Windsor Morning. 

"We had to make sure that our teachers were aware of it and aware of strategies on how to make sure our students use it properly."

ChatGPT can be used as a tool, like a calculator

Sadler says there are some benefits to having ChatGPT for the coming school year. 

What it comes down to, Sadler said, is training people how to properly use AI programs like ChatGPT as a tool rather than a shortcut.

He compared it to using a calculator and said it could be useful for teachers themselves, with things like creating lesson plans based on Ontario's curriculum. 

"It's a personal assistant to help us do our jobs more efficiently. Maybe with some more mundane tasks we can use it as a tool, so the teacher can focus more on getting to know their students," he said  

"But like any use with ChatGPT, we need the professional to vet that information."

Ways to get around ChatGPT

And other experts agree. 

Sharon Lauricella is teaching a course called communications ethics at the Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, Ont. this fall. She says content created by AI usually will "lack a tone" and have factual errors. 

"[The programs are] trained on on predictive text—they don't fact check and they make things up with great confidence," she said. 

Lauricella said generating full essays is "a serious academic offence", but she said programs like ChatGPT are useful for revising original work. 

"It's important to teach students how to prompt ChatGPT and how to use it to revise things rather than generate essays out of nowhere," she said. 

She said there are some ways to get around the use of ChatGPT altogether, because the program only has data up until 2021. She also said making assignments more personal also helps. 

"I asked my students for their own opinions, for their own ideas, for their own reflections, because I want my students to critically think," she said. 

"These kinds of assignments aren't generated by artificial intelligence. It's great if they use it to check their grammar."