Navigating the New Normal: Teaching in the Age of AI

[brooklynite]

National Association of Independent Schools

In our roles at Rye Country Day School (NY), we work to support faculty, staff, and students in a number of ways including their access to and use of technology for the purposes of teaching and learning. Already aware of artificial intelligence (AI) and curious about the potential impacts on our classrooms, we were intrigued when an English teacher shared language that ChatGPT produced in response to a question about the novel she was teaching, Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu.

As conversations about ChatGPT increased in December 2022, we met with upper school English teachers, curious to find out if they could discern which paragraphs about Interior Chinatown the bot had produced and which a student had written. Few were able to, and ultimately, more questions than answers emerged.

That’s when we decided to invite teachers and staff members to a professional development session to talk about AI and its potential benefits as well as our concerns.

A Chat with a Chatbot

Interested in professional development that meets the moment, we started to plan a discussion with teachers from across the school in order to learn what they thought about this novel technology already in the hands of our students. To plan for the January meeting, we engaged the bot in a dialogue to help us name our session.

[redstatebluegirl]

1. We need to really worry about professional degrees.

Do you want a doctor who cheated in organic chemistry, or a structural engineer who cheated in physics . What about an attorney who cheated in a major course.

Cheating has been growing rapidly over the past 15 years, AI terrifies me.