A hot potato: Ever since the public first got its hands on ChatGPT, there have been concerns about students using the generative AI to do their work. But it seems teachers are also utilizing the tool to speed up marking and develop a curriculum, despite the potential negative impacts this could have.
Called Writeable, the new ChatGPT-powered tool is designed to help teachers in grades 3-12 evaluate student papers, writes Axios. The website promises that Writeable will save grading time and offer suggestions for specific areas of improvement. Teachers are supposed to review the comments produced by the AI before handing them to their students.
Writeable also provides AI-powered prompt suggestions, promising to generate unique prompts on any topic. It can even create curriculum units “based on any novel, generate essays, multi-section assignments, and multiple-choice questions, with included answer keys.”
Writeable was purchased by Mifflin Harcourt last month. The company’s education materials are used in 90% of K-12 schools. Its CEO, Jack Lynch, said “We have a lot of teachers who are using the program and are very excited about it.”
There are several reasons why people are unhappy about teachers using Writeable. Generative AIs are still prone to hallucinations, which isn’t a good thing when it comes to marking students’ papers or creating a curriculum. There are also the privacy implications, though Writeable’s makers say it “tokenizes” students’ information so that no personally identifying details are submitted to the AI program.
The other concern is that relying on an AI to do the bulk of the marking will lessen teachers’ understanding of individual students and their needs. There could even be cases of troubled kids writing essays that are subtle cries for help, which ChatGPT fails to spot.
The flip side of the argument is that most teachers are vastly overworked and must deal with overfilled schools, a fact that could result in them making their own errors and not paying certain students enough attention. A tool that eases their workload could help enormously and give teachers more free time to focus on other areas.
A poll released in October by the National Coalition for Public School Options found that 45% of parents said “yes” when asked if K-12 schools should be able to use AI to evaluate students’ academic performance. Although it was less than half, this still does not represent an overwhelming majority of participants resistant to such a plan.
