ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language bot released in November of 2022 that can offer responses to a vast network of prompts. Its significance to students: ChatGPT answers pass plagiarism and AI-generated response detectors. AP English Literature and Composition teacher Ashley Fallon considers ChatGPT as an obstacle that will have to be adapted to in the classroom’s future.
For educators, ChatGPT poses a problem in its potential, as students could write their academic papers with its aid and use it to cheat. “At first, to be honest, it completely terrified me, this changes everything about my job,” Fallon stated. ChatGPT has yet to prove itself as a significant challenge in English classrooms this school year, but Fallon believes that she will have to address it head-on in the upcoming year.
While there may be areas of English curriculum that the AI bot could be integrated into, Fallon has yet to consider doing so, opting for a different approach. Despite the convenience of online assignments, especially done so much since Covid, Fallon has “been trying to go to more paper stuff lately”, doing more assignments in class as opposed to individual work at home where students can easily access ChatGPT and the general internet.
To Fallon, it is almost inevitable that the language bot will solidify its presence in the classroom. Whether as a beneficial writing supplement or an impediment that hurts learning, Fallon believes that the future of education will have to reshape itself to include ChatGPT and all of its possibilities. “I’m not there yet, accepting that, that [ChatGPT]’s going to be a writing tool”, she notes. “We have to acknowledge that it’s there and there are ways to incorporate it."
