mathbabe

I use chatbots as a learning tool. Teaching undergrad seniors and juniors, I give a weekly assignment involving their use: the assignment prompt asks a question that explores the weekly reading material; I ask the student first to draft an answer to the question, then give the prompt to their preferred bot; then they compare the two responses, their own and the bot’s, and post the whole thing on a discussion board.

The prompt always requires selecting a relevant quote from the reading with a page citation. Bots regularly hallucinate citations and quotes, which indicates plagiarism in their “own” response to the prompt. But my goal here is not so much to detect bot use — they have to take in-person midterm and final exams, closed book, no notes, no devices. The goal of the weekly assignment is to get even the least motivated student to engage with the material each week. Even if they don’t read the weekly text material, they’ll at least see the bot’s response.

Some students have had the bot do the entire assignment. The midterm and final exams are intended to incentivise them to at least read the bot’s response even if they didn’t read the course material. Other students seem to have given the bot the prompt first, then reworded it to disguise it as their “own” response. Rewording engages with the ideas, so that’s a bit of learning even if it’s skirting the reading.

I could forgo the weekly assignments and rely on the exams, but over the years the best students have reported that the weekly assignments were where they learned the most. I could also forgo all assessments and give them all A’s on the assumption that unmotivated students can’t be reached, so why torture them? But since I teach in a public university which is regularly attacked for its majority minority population, it’s important for me to uphold the value of their degree in the public eye. Those attacks are thinly veiled attacks on my students’ communities, not just attacks on my institution, its faculty and its students. If I were teaching at Princeton, I wouldn’t have that worry — grade inflation hasn’t destroyed elite degrees, and shouldn’t, since those students were well educated before they arrived. It’s unfair that strivers are held to a higher standard, but I believe education is a primary good, so the unfairness is the cost of a greater good. And for the most part, my students are wonderful, brilliant and beautiful minds who deserve the best.

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