Mr. Bronner, how do you use ChatGPT at school?

Uwe Ebbinghaus

Editor in the feuilleton.

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Initially, I used and demonstrated ChatGPT in a teacher-centered way in the classroom. Recently, since companies in Germany have been offering data protection-compliant access via an API interface for use in the classroom, students can log in via a QR code and execute a work order on their tablet. This new opportunity is really great because I can use ChatGPT in a personalized way and take students from passive to active work with artificial intelligence (AI). This is the case with a Google search: Almost every student has the same search result, AI tools produce very different texts and images – and these results must then be evaluated. That's why the second step is very important: Is all this true? What's wrong, where do I need to look again? Especially in mathematics, there are sometimes still quite wrong answers with ChatGPT. The students should learn to use AI not as a copy & paste application, but as an inspiration machine.

With the verification step, you can basically convert the susceptibility of the program to errors into a kind of detection work.

Yes, students enjoy finding errors in ChatGPT's answers. But of course they need a solid expertise - and at the same time a good understanding of the text. Recently, I had a class in physics class work out methods for determining the depth of a canyon based on the free fall of a rock using GPT. The motivation for the abstract task came from a corresponding scene in a "Peppa Pig" video clip. Various methods were explained step by step by the AI and were usually very good and correct. In doing so, I noticed how demanding and cognitively activating the answers actually are in their pure text form. When I do an internet search, I immediately have a picture or a sketch as a result and can very quickly click on an explanatory video that fits the topic. With ChatGPT, text comprehension is almost inevitably promoted more strongly in the natural sciences as well.

So it's premature to say that ChatGPT harms students' ability to speak because it takes too much work off their hands.

Students can get explanations at different linguistic levels in ChatGPT. This is how students who are not yet ready formulate: "Please explain the facts to me verbally for the 4th grade of elementary school". On this basis, learners can then slowly progress to formulaic coherence. In addition, ChatGPT has promotion and diagnostic elements that are remarkable. The first mathematics platform of a textbook publisher has also recently started using AI: it analyzes the level at which the learner is and, depending on this, digitally assigns exercises to increase his level. I wouldn't want to miss these opportunities in the classroom anymore.

What do they think of the AI-supported proofing tools that have recently become available with PEER from the Technical University of Munich, with DeepL Write and also with ChatGPT itself – are they already mature enough?