More chatting on chatGPT

I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago and as I stay longer and longer in the rabbit hole, I have more "chatting" to do. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that #chatGPT is one of the most promising innovations in the landscape of #highereducation in front of us. For those of you new to this scene, #chatGPT is an #AI-powered #naturallanguageprocessing platform. In higher ed we love us an acronym, so for those purists reading it, #chatGPT stands for Conversational Artificial Intelligence Generative Pre-Trained Transformer--that's a lot, so let's go with chatGPT, shall we?

So, chatGPT was developed through a joint effort between Microsoft Research Asia and Peking University to better automate conversations between humans and computers. It utilizes #AI technology to learn from previous conversations so it can provide more accurate responses over time. Think #Alexa and how she asks you if she answered your question accurately...but this tool doesn't ask, it just does.

that can help automate mundane tasks and free up educators’ time for more meaningful pursuits. Let’s take a look at how chatGPT is revolutionizing education.

Background aside, let's get to the skinny here: how does this tool help education? This is an important question, specifically since a lot of what is being discussed in education circles is how this tool is going to help students cheat [gasp]. If that is the dialog you are currently having, you may want to stop reading here because I really don't care about the plagiarism concern because cheaters cheat, with or without technology.

In my last blog post (on LInkedIn), I discussed how chatGPT could change higher ed in 3 fundamental ways: 1) innovating #onlinelearning, 2) #personalizinglearning, and 3) streamlining #teaching. All important opportunities. Let's dig into the streamlining of teaching in this blog a bit.

Streamlining Teaching

With this technology, faculty can use #automatedbots to answer simple student questions about course material or administrative issues without having to constantly monitor their email inboxes, hats, texts, or Slack channels throughout the day. Faculty: you know the questions..."what book are we supposed to buy?", "when is the final paper due?", "when are your office hours?". Instead of replying with the old standby of "read the syllabus", why not create a customized bot from your syllabus so it can answer your student's questions in real-time? This can be especially helpful during busy times like midterm or end-of-term seasons when professors are overwhelmed with student inquiries and the other million items they have to take care of during those times. Particularly helpful in online learning, faculty can be training their bot with the common questions they get throughout a term (or previous ones) and ask their students to use it in future terms. Better yet, a professor can engage their learners in the fun and ask them to submit all the random questions they had/have during a term to train the bot for future terms!

The possibilities are endless on how chatGPT can improve #timemanagement in teaching.

In the end, chatGPT is revolutionizing higher education by providing educators and administrators with an easy-to-use platform that automates mundane tasks while still providing personalized experiences for students--and it's here, friends. As educational institutions continue to adopt this technology, we should expect to see broader applicability and use-cases that go way beyond initial worries about plagiarism and cheating. The future is here.