Resources for exploring ChatGPT and higher education

What might ChatGPT mean for higher education and society?

Today I’m hosting a Future Trends Forum session on the topic (please do join us!).  Here I’d like to offer some resources in support of it, for participants and anyone else interested.

To begin with, here’s the OpenAI page introducing the bot and a button to press to start it up.

Next, resources, including readings, podcasts, and videos.  Each has a few words about why I found them to be useful.

Readings

Ian Bogost, “ChatGPT Is Dumber Than You Think: Treat it like a toy, not a tool” critiques the technology, seeing it as an epic purveyor of bullshit, then asks us to consider the bot as a kind of toy or instrument to play with the broad sweep of digital content.

Katy Ilonka Gero, “AI Reveals the Most Human Parts of Writing” argues for AI as a writing assistant, especially helping with the less imaginative parts of composition and creativity.

Nancy Gleason, “ChatGPT and the rise of AI writers: how should higher education respond?” recommends alternative assessments as well as having students use chatbots to produce writing they can critique.

David Golumbia, “ChatGPT Should Not Exist” charges generative AI with nihilism and a bad view of humanity.

Daniel Herman, “The End of High-School English: I’ve been teaching English for 12 years, and I’m astounded by what ChatGPT can produce” thinks the tech will enable students to cheat at major levels. “What GPT can produce right now is better than the large majority of writing seen by your average teacher or professor.”

Anders Isaksson, “ChatGPT and its Effects on Higher Education”   offers an overview of the technology and various implications for education, including for copyright.

Steven D. Krause, “AI Can Save Writing by Killing ‘The College Essay'” finds several major problems with ChatGPT.  First, writing instructors should be able to spot bot writing and respond appropriately.  Second, the bot can’t do research. Instead, the tool might help some students improve their writing, and instructors should craft better assignments.

Stephen Marche, “The College Essay Is Dead: Nobody is prepared for how AI will transform academia” thinks, as per the title, that ChatGPT has killed the college essay, at least in the humanities. Now we wants more discussions between humanists and technologists.

Beth McMurtrie, “Teaching Experts Are Worried About ChatGPT, but Not for the Reasons You Think” interviews a group of writing instructors on their views, covering a lot of ground.

Katie Metzler and ChatGPT, “How ChatGPT Could Transform Higher Education” covers a lot of implications, and is also a good example of using the tech to write a significant part of the post.

Anna Mills, “How do we prevent learning loss due to AI text generators?” A list of teaching ideas. A living document.

Ethan Mollick, “The Mechanical Professor” uses the bot to develop class syllabi, then several types of academic writing.

Eva Rtology, “How to Identify chatGPT stories?” advises us that readers can detect bot writing, and that tools under development (and some already available) will help us do that.

Jeff Schatten, “Will Artificial Intelligence Kill College Writing? Online programs can churn out decent papers on the cheap. What now?” makes the case for chatbots’ limitations and in favor of changing pedagogies to ward off plagiarism.

Brad Stone, “Anti-Cheating Education Software Braces for AI Chatbots” considers how Turnitin and others might respond.

John Warner, “Freaking Out About ChatGPT—Part I” – thinks the bot condemns bad essay teaching, especially in K-12. Hopefully we’ll move past that pedagogy to a better one which “let[s] students explore the messy and fraught process of learning how to write.”

Marc Watkins, “AI Will Augment, Not Replace” reports on the University of Mississippi’s recent work on chatbots and education, including the use of a counterargument generator.

Bibliographies

Anna Mills, “AI Text Generators: Sources to Stimulate Discussion among Teachers,” Google Doc with many, many sources.

Lee Skallerup Bessette, “ChatGPT” Zotero collection.

Podcasts

Intelligence Squared, “ChatGPT: The Death and Rebirth of Writing” – a discussion with Steven Marche.

Mike Palmer, “ChatGPT and the Future of Education with Nancy our Virtual Cohost” addresses a range of ways the bot can change or be used within higher education. Nice use of ChatGPT to create content for an AI speaker, too.

Videos

BioLab Collective, “Can AI replace Professors? | AI and the Future of Education” works through various potential uses of the bot in classes, evaluating each.

Sora Schools, “ChatGPT Explained: Sora CEO on the Future of Education & AI” calls ChatGPT an educational disruptor and calls on schools to include the tech in curricula.

If there’s interest, I can keep this going.  And please do share anything we should add in comments.