Carnegie Mellon Professors Innovate with ChatGPT in Education
With the emergence of ChatGPT a year and a half ago, many professors worried that students might use this tool instead of doing their own written assignments. However, English professors Suguru Ishizaki and David Kaufer from Carnegie Mellon University saw this new technology as an opportunity to enhance students’ writing skills.
While Ishizaki and Kaufer were concerned about the potential misuse of AI tools by students, they aimed to use these tools to help students incorporate their ideas more effectively into their assignments. They dubbed this approach “restrained generative AI” and developed a prototype software called myScribe. This software is being piloted in 10 courses at the university this semester.
One of the key features of the new tool, “Notes to Prose” transforms students’ scattered thoughts into sentences or draft paragraphs. The tool operates solely on the student’s notes, helping them develop their ideas without resorting to external sources. The professors advocate for the responsible use of AI tools in education, presenting a vision for how this technology can advance writing instruction.
Associate Professor Stacie Rohrbach from the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon sees great potential in the tools created by her colleagues and emphasizes the need for such constrained approaches, noting that students often misuse ChatGPT. Education consultant John Warner argues that AI tools require oversight and asserts that transforming notes into text is an essential part of the human writing process.
Ishizaki and Kaufer continue to explore how AI can be responsibly integrated into writing education, believing that this technology will play a significant role in the future of education.