How Teachers Are Using—or Not Using—ChatGPT in the Classroom
Kevin Lisle, who has been teaching high-school chemistry at Marist School in Atlanta for 23 years, now has an assistant on call 24/7 to help his students. His new assistant sometimes spouts misinformation, but is good at explaining concepts and suggesting possibilities that students may have overlooked. Lisle’s assistant is better known as ChatGPT—the most prominent of a new breed of artificial-intelligence chatbots.
Nearly a year after the launch of ChatGPT, teachers and professors across the U.S. are realizing they can’t ban or ignore a tool that many of their students are eagerly using. For many, ChatGPT is changing how they teach and evaluate their students.
Yes, they’re worried about students using ChatGPT to cheat or cut corners. But that is tempered by hopes that it can help them learn faster. And many teachers say that students should be encouraged to use bots because employers will expect them to have learned that skill.
“We don’t perceive it as a threat to be blocked but as a tool to be leveraged," says Kevin Mullally, principal of Marist, a Roman Catholic institution serving grades seven through 12. When Lisle first encountered ChatGPT, which is produced by OpenAI, in late 2022, “I was just astounded by what it was able to do," he says. For the first six months or so, he experimented with the bot but didn’t incorporate it into his chemistry classes.
He noticed that upgraded versions were far better than the original. When classes resumed for the current semester, he encouraged students to open up a ChatGPT account if they hadn’t already. “One student said, ‘Wait a second! Are we allowed to do this?’ " Lisle recalls.
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