English teachers’ concerns about the ethical use of chatgpt by university students

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English teachers' concerns about the ethical use of ChatGPT by university students

Oksana Stepanechko

Ph.D. in Pedagogy, Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages for Mathematical Faculties Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine

Liubov Kozub

Ph.D. in Philology, Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages for Mathematical Faculties Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine

Summary

A surprising new challenge appeared with the advent of ChatGPT in November 2022 dealing with many academic tasks of different levels. The tool that revolutionized the way people interact with machines caused a lot of heated debates over its benefits and limitations. There is an increasing number of works devoted to different aspects of ChatGTP usage. They pose discussions and arguments among educators, scientists, governmental representatives, and even technology experts concerning ethical issues surrounding the use of ChatGTP. Some governmental institutions reacted instantly to the latest text tool and even forbade its use at schools and universities because of the fear that students might use it to cheat in university writing assignments and academic papers. The main worry is that tasks generated by this tool are relatively qualitative and may have a negative impact on learning. It does not contribute to developing critical thinking and problemsolving skills that are essential for wholesome personalities and successful professionals. Another big challenge for teachers connected with the use of ChatGTP by university students is the inability to distinguish the text written by a new OpenAI chatbot from the works written by real students, even with the help of antiplagiarism tools currently in use. The results of the study prove that for many English teachers ChatGTP is the tool that may impede and interfere with successful educational process preventing the development of students' creativity, critical thinking, and analytical skills. However, we admit the necessity to take advantage of the new chatbot, the need to rethink and reconsider the existing methods and praxis for learning foreign languages in line with the requirements of the time. It is of primary importance to start looking for new ways how to incorporate the emerging technology into the educational process, using effectively its possibilities and tools. english teachers students

Keywords: ChatGPT, chatbot, AI, educational process, university students, benefits and limitations.

ChatGPT is the latest trend in communication with artificial intelligence (AI). In other words, "ChatGPT is a chatbot tool, a robot, a large language model trained on the enormous amount of information from the Internet" [1]. It is "a conversational AI chatbot ... designed to answer questions, provide information, solve a range of problems, and communicate the response back to you in a human-like manner" [2].

According to the statistics, it reached one million users in just five days after it was launched for public use in November 2022 and gained 57 million active users in its first month [3; 4]. ChatGTP is growing in popularity, becoming "the fastest-growing tech platform" [5] with each passing day. Its future is anticipated by many scholars, inventors, tech specialists, public figures, etc. [6; 7; 8; 9]. Obviously, it becomes extremely popular with young people who are potentially our current students.

ChatGTP is a powerful tool with a vast range of applications. Using this trendy chatbot, anyone can easily get an answer to a number of questions, ask for the translation in different languages, obtain the required information, and even write or debug computer code. Sounds great, isn't it?

Acknowledging the undeniable advantages and benefits of this fascinating chatbot for its users, we cannot but mention some of our concerns about its influence on the students' abilities in critical and creative thinking, the development and improvement of their writing and analytical skills.

In the study of foreign languages students often get tasks to work with a text (to write a summary or review of a book or an article) that require good skills in reading comprehension and analysis. Besides, writing tasks may contain a list of questions or issues a student should address (to identify the main idea of the text, to structure the material, to write headings for paragraphs, etc.), it may be a task to evaluate a book or an article or to give an opinion on a problem raised in the text. Such tasks usually require students to read carefully, digest the information, study the requirements to a certain type of writing and devote a certain amount of time to the writing itself. Overall, such tasks do not look pretty simple and easy. However, students who use ChatGTP may do such writing tasks within minutes. Accordingly, students with strong hard skills will lose the opportunity to develop their critical thinking, analytical abilities, and even writing skills.

Moreover, this "helper" can create an essay, write a letter, an article or describe a point of view on any theme if you designate the parameters. You name it - ChatGTP does it. The chatbot is adaptive to the context and users' interests. There is no need for students to develop their creativity, the ability to think outside the box, to make conclusions, and solve issues. This tool can do any written task the student inquires about as it has a huge database that is uploaded and improved daily. "The bot doesn't just search and summarize information that already exists. It creates new content, tailored to your request, often with a startling degree of nuance... and creativity" [10].

We carried out research to test the work of ChatGTP in Academic English and Scientific English classes with the Master's students of cybernetics and IT specialties at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The students were given an assignment to write an essay on the topic "Should we be afraid of AI?" Some preliminary activities were done to discuss the structure of the essay and its types, analyze model texts and how they are organized, and improve students' writing skills.

Here is the example of one of the students' essays:

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly important part of our lives, from personal assistants to self-driving cars. While the benefits of AI are clear, there are some concerns about the potential dangers it poses. Some argue that we should be afraid of AI, while others believe that such fears are overblown.

On the one hand, as AI continues to develop, it may become uncontrollable or pose a threat to humanity. There's a type of takeover that people worry about. Since AI can handle human processes in a fraction of the time, there is a lot of fear and debate about AI taking over jobs and the economy.

On the other hand, AI can help make decisions on everything from healthcare and law enforcement to retail and education. In nearly every area we serve, we can use AI to provide a better experience for the people we serve. In each of these domains, we can use vast amounts of data to train how machine learning can add value - whether by improving efficiency, gaining new insights, or simply facilitating tasks.

Creating fear around AI is holding us back from what can be a beneficial tool for all of our lives. As AI develops further and becomes more ingrained in our lives, we should start looking at it as a totally new tool."

For the sake of the experiment, we asked ChatGTP the same question and received the following answer:

"AI has the potential to bring about many benefits, such as improving efficiency, providing better healthcare, and reducing accidents in industries such as transportation. However, there are also concerns about the negative impact that AI could have on society. For example, some worry that AI could take over jobs, or be programmed with biases that could harm certain groups of people.

Ultimately, whether or not we should be afraid of AI depends on how it is developed and used. It is important that AI is developed with a focus on ethical considerations, including transparency, accountability, and the avoidance of bias. Additionally, it is important that we understand and manage the potential risks of AI and ensure that it is used in a way that benefits society as a whole.

In summary, we should approach AI with caution and a critical mindset, but we do not need to be afraid of it. With responsible development and use, AI has the potential to bring about many positive changes to our world." (ChatGPT, March 3, 2023).

Comparing these two responses we can conclude that the bot is capable to follow the logical structure of the question and produce convincing creative content. Could we differentiate between a student's and robot's replies? How can professors be sure that the student wrote the paper without the help of ChatGPT? If students used the chatbot, it took them probably a couple of minutes to do the assignment. In this case, the only skill required is to compose the inquiry that is the theme of the essay itself.

The users of ChatGTP confirm that this tool generates different resources and changes the outcome texts for the same request. Accordingly, students will have different texts/answers for the same task. The problem is modern plagiarism checker software cannot identify the text generated by ChatGPT. As a result, we already have a case of a diploma paper written by ChatGPT [11].

From the feedbacks of the students participating in the study we may conclude that ChatGTP can be quite informative, helpful, and instructive while answering a wide range of questions as it is based on a neural network trained on a huge amount of texts. However, it becomes pretty challenging and motivating for teachers who have to change the way they design writing tasks. It is an opportunity for educators "to think deeply about how to make school feel meaningful and relevant to students so that they won't want to outsource their work to AI in the first place" [12]. One of the ways to develop and assess students' creative, problem-solving, and decisionmaking skills is the use of the inquiry-based method that allows students "to gain knowledge by working on a problem, making decisions, improving their critical thinking, developing communicative and digital skills, fostering cooperation, and promoting learners' autonomy and independence" [13].

Considering the possibilities of using ChatGTP for educational purposes, some researchers focus on the benefits of this chatbot, giving evidence and confirming their assumptions. According to D. Baidoo-Anu and L. Owusu Ansah, "ChatGPT can serve as a virtual tutor which can answer students' questions and provide explanations on a wide range of subjects. This can be particularly useful for students who are struggling with a particular topic or who need extra help outside of the classroom" [14].

Obviously, not all educators are so optimistic and present some limitations of this bot, like generating wrong answers or making up a non-existing scientific article with a non-functional URL. That led to the crucial question under consideration by the scientists who wonder "How will AI affect scientific writing, reviewing, and editing"? Trying to answer this question R. Gilat and B.J. Cole claimed that "as readers, reviewers, and editors, we must stay aware of the possibility that these tools are already being used inappropriately. We need to keep assessing the scientific accuracy, validity, and originality of each paper carefully" [15].

In order to avoid misunderstandings, abuses, and cheating, it is important to regulate the rules of the use of ChatGPT for educational purposes and set limitations for students and educational institutions. The New York City Education Department was among the first to ban ChatGPT in New York public schools "due to concerns about the negative impact on student learning, as well as concerns about the safety and accuracy of the content" provided by the chatbot [16]. Similar worries express Polish journalists and educators asking "Will GPT chat be the curse of the education system? Will it enable students to cheat and cheat on an unknown scale, turning the next generation into mindless users expecting ready-made answers from robots? [17].

Accordingly, the questions arise how the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and Ukrainian education community will react to ChatGTP, what actions they will take to adjust and adapt to new technology to make students learning more meaningful and effective. These questions remain open and require an urgent response.

Conclusions

The results of the study prove that ChatGTP is a powerful tool that has become our new reality. We have to accept the fact that this cutting-edge chatbot will bring many challenges, particularly when it comes to education, some ethical issues like plagiarism, professional and academic integrity. ChatGTP becomes an even greater challenge for English teachers who have to adapt to the new tool. This chatbot has a huge amount of information in English and can easily do any task it receives. As a result, teachers have to check the authenticity of the work done by students with the help of other learning methods and techniques such as spontaneous speech, interactive learning, debates, discussions, case studies, and inquiry-based tasks. Thus, the key is to strike a balance between harnessing the abilities of ChatGPT to improve students' knowledge and minimizing its potential negative consequences and revolutionize education in order to use the potential of the tool for beneficial cooperation in teaching and learning. In the nearest future educators will need to find the way how to incorporate ChatGTP into the educational process, to teach students about their ethical responsibility, better understand its limitations and possibilities, to develop their critical thinking, analytical skills, creativity, ability to express themselves the way that cannot be replaced by technology, to become the creators of the content, not the mere users of the new advanced tool.

References

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