Task 1 - Chatbots: Friend or Foe?

Chatbots have rocked the world in the last 12 months as it has created many fears and questions for the future such as: Is this the beginning of something that will change education forever? How will it affect students' learning? Will it hinder original thinking/creativity in the classroom? These questions have left schools and Universities around the globe putting precautions in place to ensure that Chatbots are used safely by their students and that they don’t let them generate their work for them. As a future teacher, it is important that I am aware of emerging technologies such as ChatGPT and other chatbots as these are just the beginning - they're certainly just going to evolve more from here. For starters, on the discussion on Chatbots limiting creativity in the classroom, I thought I would go straight to the source. I asked ChatGPT “In 50 words or less, do chatbots foster or hinder creativity in the classroom?” ChatGPT responded with

“There is no clear consensus on whether chatbots foster or hinder creativity in the classroom. While chatbots can provide unique prompts and encourage collaboration, there is a risk of over-reliance and reduced motivation for active learning. It ultimately depends on how chatbots are implemented and integrated into the learning experience.”

Scholars also tend to agree with this statement. For example, Pérez et al, 2020, states that while chatbots in the classroom tend to help improve results, there is also less of a relationship like what students have with a teacher, and long monologues from a chatbot tend to be tedious and less engaging. It is important the correct parameters are put in place around chatbots. They are better used as an accessory in the classroom rather than just doing the work for students. For example, chatbots are great for brainstorming ideas and prompts to then elaborate on with original thinking and unique ideas to foster a creative environment in the classroom.

PEDAGOGICAL ISSUES

There are a few issues that can come along with chatbots in the classroom. The main one is that similar to students, chatbots are learners. They learn based on data input by users. This means they can get things wrong, so not everything said by a chatbot should be taken as 100% accurate. Also, chatbots can be prone to bias based on this same training data, so it is important to use varying sources.

A quick video that shows the power of what ChatGPT is capable of!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lin, P. (2019). Conversational Chatbots: Review, Challenges, and Future Directions. 2019 Amity International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AICAI). https://doi.org/10.1109/aicai.2019.8701365

Pérez, J. Q., Daradoumis, T., & Puig, J. M. (2020). Rediscovering the use of Chatbots in Education: A systematic literature review. Computer Applications in Engineering Education, 28(6), 1549–1565. https://doi.org/10.1002/cae.22326

Smutny, P., & Schreiberova, P. (2020). Chatbots for Learning: A Review of Educational Chatbots for the facebook messenger. Computers & Education, 151, 103862. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103862