Wait-wait-wait... is this the same Rudy McDaniel that wrote "Best Practices (something-something) Ethical Learning in Games"?? I think this is the first time I've ever "bumped into" someone whose work I read while browsing JSTOR in a class!
I appreciated his specific techniques for incorporating AI, and am illuminated by his insight into why AI isn't as helpful to students (or to the course materials) as we hoped. Like Drs. McDaniel and Johnson, I was also surprised that some students were hesitant to use it at all, either because it felt like cheating or because it feels like skipping the learning part.
His suggestion about having students use it on code, i.e. to ask "Why isn't this working?" when some code isn't working, is well taken. I have an exercise similar to this. I ask students to create a chess piece, with its own unique way of moving, and write up the (brief) rules for it. The key is to keep it simple ("The Wolf can move two squares in any diagonal direction") and sometimes, maybe, a slight complication that fits its name ("The Puppy can move one space in any direction, like the King, but cannot capture"). About 75-80 percent of them want it to do things that can't be written into board game rules ("The Longshoreman is in love with one of the Knights, and will always try to protect it") and in those cases, I suggest they ask ChatGPT _why_ it's unclear. This sometimes offends them, which is inconvenient (for all of us) but I am inspired by Dr. McDaniel's point that DURING the conversation with ChatGPT, they're less threatened by it (and I imagine less likely to argue with it than they are to argue with a human teacher).
First of all, I love that farming communities use AI to mean artificial insemination, that's completely awesome, and I can only imagine what it must be like to show up at the wrong conference and deliver your paper anyway.
The aphoristic "AI is not meant to avoid opportunities to learn" is a strong sentence, one of those with just enough condescending tang to appeal to weary educators, and to make students weary of educators. I say this, of course, because I sympathize, but it's kind of akin to saying "When you cheat on a quiz, you're only cheating yourself!" -- which isn't true for someone who cheats and gets away with it, it's only true if someone gets caught. The subtext, obvious to teachers but elusive to students, is only true if one assumes that quizzes help people learn, and studies show that ironically, that's only true if you can _retake_ the quiz infinite times (Yee told us that. Kind of. He phrased it differently.)
Anyway, Roberts quotes a teacher in Mississippi who says that AI "risks losing the value of the struggle". Roberts then says that this begs the question, What is learning for? But she's wrong, that's not the question it begs, the question it begs is clearly "Who says 'struggle' has value?" -- everyone knows what learning is for. It's for the acquisition of knowledge or skills. Who doubted that? But just about everyone who's ever been in any struggle has asked whether the struggle was worth it, whether anything was being gained, or whether it was just a loss on all levels.
I love teachers. Everyone in my family is a teacher. Teachers are hilariuous and admirable. This article caught Teachers (as a group) at the end of a very long, not-so-great day, and they weren't being entirely reasonable or sane. Their responses to ChatGPT are not logically sound, and are the kind of thing people are embarrassed about saying later. For instance, that player-piano analogy is from another century. It says we'd all pay and get dressed up to hear a human play the same song that sounds gimicky from a player piano. I would not pay $140 and wear a tie to see anybody play 'The Entertainer'.
Then there was "Would you ask ChatGPT to describe your date?" -- I mean, I'd have to be pretty bored to ask it to do that. But I'm not super-opposed to hearing it describe date-night either. So I guess I'm not worried. Why would I be, what would it say?
"You went to Cracker Barrel. You were susprised to see that it had a gift shop, although you had been to Cracker Barrel and seen its gift shop before. Why this should have surprised you is a complex question, with implications for sociology, cognitive science studies, anthropology and economics. Overall, you probably found it surprising because knowing it was there has never factored into your daily life. You didn't browse in the gift shop, because you were there primarily for a meal, and the movie theater was fifteen minutes away, limiting the total amount of time available to spend at Cracker Barrel. Fortunately, it was Sunday, so traffic was minimal. You had salad."
MY GOD, THAT'S UNCANNY! HOW? HOW DOES IT KNOW ALL THIS?? WE'RE DOOMED!
The faculty page on AI learning has some useful ideas, particularly using ChatGPT to fuel a conversation about information literacy (and trustworthiness of sources) and only having open book exams. The rebuttal assignment is a really interesting one, as well, that I'm excited to try.
You know what I love about being in this choir? All the great sermons I get to hear :).