This summer is all about work for me. I spend four days a week at home and the other three on campus at the Techbar. I love being at home; I’m able to spend time with my cats and family, sleep in my own bed, and have my things nearby. But I also enjoy working at the Techbar, especially since I’m part of an ongoing project researching how AI is being used in classrooms.
That work got me thinking about how educators are reacting to AI tools like ChatGPT. Some are understandably concerned—it’s so easy for students to copy and paste an assignment sheet into a prompt and get a decent answer. This makes it harder to tell whether a student really understands the material, especially in subjects where little writing is involved, like math.
But here’s the thing: I didn’t even know what ChatGPT was until a professor mentioned it, in the context of telling us not to use it. Naturally, I looked it up. It seemed cool. I asked it to generate something for me, and then I had a lightbulb moment: Could it help me study?
Turns out, it could. ChatGPT helped me create study guides, practice questions, and time management plans for each of my classes. It quickly became a tool I could rely on to supplement my learning and organize my workload.
However, not everyone takes this approach to AI usage. I discuss this more in other blog posts, found here.