ChatGPT and the Educational Pump Fake

05/25/2023

I love a good pump fake in basketball. It’s one of those moves that when done properly, leaves the victim looking like a helpless child who is trying to play a game with grown-ups. The pump fake is one of those rare classic moves that just seems to improve over time, while at its core really staying the same as it always was. For the uninitiated, the pump fake is a feat of athletic slight of hand, where the ball carrier makes the other player, or the victim, believe that they are about to go in a specific direction, or possibly send the ball in a specific direction.  This misdirection is often done using the head or the ball (other names: head fake, or ball fake).  As humans who are socialized, we are conditioned to expect that where the fake leads, the body will follow, and this is often true… Except in the rare cases where an athlete has specifically learned to move the ball, head or another body part one way without the intent to move anything else in that direction.  Pump fakes are effective, because they play upon our conditioning and our expectations to throw us off balance. The best pump fakes usually end up with the victim flat on the floor, out of the game for that critical moment. To watch a master, check out the video below:

Innovation and scientific or technological progress have given many pump fakes to education. The script, played out over and over, usually goes something like this:

Innovator: “Look, I have made a new thing!”

Educator 1: “This new thing will fundamentally change education forever!”

Educators all together: “Three cheers for the new thing!”

Students: <shrug>

Educator 2: “Students will use it to cheat!”

Educators all together: “Ban it from schools!”

Students: <rolling eyes>

Over and over, throughout history, we have seen this script play out. Radio, television, the laser disc player, VCR and portable video camera, and more recently the internet, virtual reality and the cell phone. Educational technology is a virtual parade of pump fakes, not because these ideas have not merit, danger or educational value, but because the learning community at large continuously fails to contextualize their value within a system of learning that places a higher value on what matters in teaching and learning.  Namely, providing a social environment where students can build knowledge in ways that make sense to them, and share that learning in authentic meaningful ways. That kind of learning environment can't be ruined, replicated or perfected by AI, or any other technology.

That isn't to say that AI doesn't have tremendous value in education – it does, and we should learn how to harness it and also put it into the hands of students whenever possible, so we can see all the great things they do with it. It's just that if you are dreaming about scaling education using AI-powered instructor bots, or afraid that every assignment will be fodder for ChatGPT, I'm afraid you will be both disappointed and relieved.  So how so we keep our focus in the right place?

First, we should work to frame student learning as a change in student thinking that results from a guided experience, rather than the transfer of information and subsequent proof of that transfer. In the right learning framework, we pull AI away from the fringe as savior and destroyer of education and into the range of just another tool we can use.

Here are just a few other thoughts on ways that we might leverage AI in productive ways:

• Better understanding the massive data stream that we produce in LMS and other online systems, to provide us insights into the nuance of successful student behavior, and then iterating on that data to build systems that provide adaptive guidance to students, assisting with engagement and interaction with course materials and activities.
• Ask ourselves questions like, “What if AI was as welcome in my class as pencil and paper?  What does a meaningful, AI-inclusive learning environment look like? If I'm preparing a student to work, live and create in the future, how can I serve them well in a world where AI is everywhere?"
• As educators, we should all spend plenty of time with AI, so we know what it is, how it works, and what it can and cannot do.
• When we think about the strengths of AI, we might ask ourselves about the things that we do in education (other than teaching an learning) that could be outsourced to AI to save us time and money, and the free up resources for the things that AI simply cannot do. Things like large, complex pattern recognition, the generation of resources, the retelling or reshaping narratives, evaluation of resources, and many others fall into this group.
• We should be thinking about the ways that AI systems can help us understand our own thinking and behavior.  Students should understand these large data models as a means of sharpening their own thinking.

There are so many ways we can use this resource, if we just calm down, take our finger off the panic button, and spend a little time exercising our own creativity. Here's an opportunity for us all to mindfully avoid another pump fake, and keep ourselves in the game.