Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, there has been a lot of discussion on the impact of AI on education. It will increase plagiarism and cheating, students will not do their own research and work and so many other OMG reactions to it. But it’s not all doom and gloom.
I’ve spent a lot of time researching AI and considering its impact on education. I think it has a lot of potential to be a resource to help students and faculty but as educators we all need to take a breath and really take a hard look at AI and its place in our professional practices and the lives of students (simply banning its use will not work – banning new technologies never works). I will be writing more on AI in the days to come, but today I want to focus on AI and subjective feedback.
I was asked the question can AI provide subjective feedback? My initial reaction was to say no, but let’s think on this. Automated tools, intelligent and not, have been used to provide objective feedback for years. Many of you have used software to correct tests etc. It can be an accurate and timesaving way to provide that objective feedback to students. But what about subjective feedback? I know that subjective feedback comes form the head, heart, knowledge and experience of the educator, not from their fingertips on a keyboard using a tool to do all the work. As an educator you must know your students, what they bring to the classroom and what they may be dealing with outside of it.The subjective feedback you provide must be specific and relevant to each student. I do not think that AI is there yet – it doesn’t have the data you do to give fair, in depth and relevant subjective feedback to students.
Does this mean you should not use AI for any form of subjective feedback? In my opinion one of the best current uses of AI is to provide first drafts or frameworks for the writing you do, so technically, with the correct input (the big issue here), you could use AI to start the subjective feedback process. It cannot be the sole source of subjective feedback, it doesn’t know your students the way you do.
Simply put, AI can be a tool to help start the subjective feedback process, but it is nowhere ready to do it all by itself. Maybe someday it will and that’s why educators should continue to use and improve it, but for now, subjective feedback must always come from the educator and be meaningful for the student.
My advice is to explore the limits of AI as a tool you can use in your professional practice. Like any new tool (remember PowerPoint and the Internet) you need to discover its capabilities and limits and how it can best be used to support the learning of your students. Do not you dismiss it outright or use it immediately, get to understand AI, its strengths and weaknesses, it pros and cons. Then you can use it to your advantage and that of your students.