Is ChatGPT’s new mode your next tutor?
Students will always look for shortcuts, but OpenAI hope their new mode will help them look for answers.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (with no wifi) you’ll be aware that ChatGPT and other AI platforms have been working their way into many aspects of daily life – usually is filling your social media with dodgy (and now not so dodgy) generated images, churning out copy filled with the tell tale bulletpoints, em dashes, and emojis. Or maybe you’ve been using it to streamline workflows and helping research topics by having it spit out an answer to any question you may have.
Since the rise of popularity surrounding generative AI tools, educators and learning scientists have been raising concerns about the effect of students being handed answers by these platforms and bypassing the development that cognitive engagement provides. With students using these AI systems at times to complete huge parts of their work OpenAI have now added in an additional mode to help users solve problems and find solutions themselves – Study Mode launched on July 29th and aims to be a game changer for students.
A recent study surveyed over 11,000 students from 15 countries to get a better understanding of their use of AI and it was found that 80% of them reported using generative AI for academic support. Out of these, it was found that it was used largely for helping them to understand complex topics by helping them with summarising materials and helping produce study guides for them. All the while students a quickly adopting this new tool and a majority of them expecting AI to become a standard classroom feature in the next 5 years, 74% of the UK’s teachers report to having have zero training surrounding AI.
With Study Mode activated the platform no longer pumps out an answer to the user’s question but asks questions to clarify what your learning goals and understanding is before breaking down daunting concepts into manageable ones. This on demand tutor means parents can brush up on their own skills before helping their children with homework, or university students can get help coming to grasps with their chosen studies. Whats more is that Study Mode will also periodically include mini-quizzes and open-ended prompts, helping the user reflect on their learning and to help assess their understanding of the topic.
The impressive part about this is that it is included in all tiers of user, including free! This game changing tool is available to all with an internet connection, simply look in the tools section of the chat box and you are ready to start you’re new class.
Every great tool isn’t without it’s drawbacks though, AI is still not always the most reliable of sources, with OpenAI themselves emphasising that there may still be inconsistencies, even the occasional mistake. On top of this students can also easily turn off the study mode and go back to being given the answer the LLM deems as the most accurate.
While it may not be perfect with the cons it currently has this is a big step for the Artificial Intelligence power house as they aim to make a broader shift towards being an educational support tool, a goal backed up by their partnerships with Stanford and Khan Academy. This is also a mode that they aim to build upon and improve by embedding the behaviour directly into it’s core models and that addition of tracking, visual enhancements, and broader goal-setting.
