Andrew Shephard, a computer science industrial engineering major at WVU is working on a way to integrate AI into the classroom. His tool is called GPTeacher, and it's currently being tested in three different classrooms at the university.
"The whole idea is to bring AI in a way that it can help people learn," Shephard said. "I've been hearing stories from teachers on how they're currently using ChatGPT, some teachers like to have ChatGPT make an essay and then the student makes an essay and they see which one is better. There's a lot of creative stuff that people are doing right now, but I'm trying to integrate that into a better package instead of a duct-tape approach."
A wood science class, entrepreneurship class and computer engineering class are serving as test beds for Shephard's AI program.
GPTeacher works by serving as a resource students can reach out to at any time of the day, any day of the week. Instructors define the bounds of the material it's teaching, inserting problems and answers into the program in order to ensure it doesn't mislead or give wrong answers when a student uses it. However, the exciting part is that the AI doesn't reduce teaching down to memorization. It might know the answer to a question a student has, but it won't give the answer to the student right away.
Instead, the process by which the answer can be found is also taught to the AI by the instructor, and in turn, the AI guides students through the process by creating a series of gateways that the student must first solve. Each gateway builds on the last one, allowing a student to find their way to an answer. It still engages critical thinking skills. Human instructors are necessary to the process, because without them the AI can go off the rails. However, working in tandem, the AI becomes a powerful tool for the benefit of students.
The AI has benefits not just for students, but for instructors as well.
"It also made me be a better teacher when I went into class," Philomena Krosmico, an instructor in the industrial engineering department at WVU, who is using the AI in her class. "Because I basically taught it, as I was thinking through those step processes, it made me think of things that I didn't necessarily think of originally, so I actually feel like I taught my subject better, because I was teaching it first."
Krosmico's class only meets once a week. Although she does have office hours, sometimes her office hours might conflict with a student's schedule, a student might have another class or work at the same time. However, the AI makes it possible for her to help her students with questions by proxy, since the AI is using the techniques and knowledge she herself gave it.
Another thing that makes this a powerful teaching tool is that the AI can also track what students are having the most difficulty with. The AI tracks what questions come up the most and what students spend the most time studying. It reports this to instructors, who can then tailor their classes accordingly.
Carrie White, the executive director for the Morris L. Hayhurst LaunchLab, also teaches an entrepreneurship class where the AI is used as well. White's class deals more heavily with writing than a class such as computer science might. However, this also shows the level of flexibility that GPTeacher is capable of. While a computer science class might seem like a more elemental fit for an AI, White can still instruct GPTeacher to help students with their writing.
In fact, this experience pushing AI outside its bounds with more technical subjects only helps improve the program. AI and software are ultimately a reflection of their creator, bound to the limitations of the minds that create it. With its entry to more writing based environments, Shephard actively discusses the AI's deployment with the instructor's he's working with. This ensures different styles of teaching and concerns are incorporated into the AI and that the AI is teaching according to the subject it is presented with, rather than taking a one size fits all approach.
This shows that the discussion around AI goes beyond black and white.
"You know, you hear a lot of negativity like, 'Oh, they're just cheating on tests or they're not writing their own essays,' but the way he's incorporated it for my students it's actually quite helpful," White said. "It helps them to see how they could improve their writing."
Shephard is emphatic that this tool won't replace teachers.
He said this tool isn't like the Duolingo courses WVU has proposed for the world languages program. Neither White or Kromisco said they feel GPTeacher is replacing them. It's a good thing, because Shephard said the AI is on par with that of a six year old. People tend to overestimate just how smart AI currently is.
"The smartest AI in the world right now is ChatGPT 4, but they have that thing working right now with duct tape and it costs so much money to run every day," he said.
Despite that, he is making a foray into an area that other companies see a lot of promise in. Shephard said Khan Academy, an online education company, is doing similar research, as are others. As AI proliferates, people like Shephard are engineering what the future will actually look like, and that future looks a lot more complex than what the general public currently imagines.
"I feel like humans at the end of the day, humans are going to control it, right? And so we can develop it for good or for evil," White said. "So let's all work together and make it so that it can be helpful and not something that we're afraid of."
©2023 the Times West Virginian (Fairmont, W. Va.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
