For as long as Jake Price has been a teacher, online algebra problem-solving website Wolfram Alpha has threatened to make algebra homework obsolete.
Teachers have learned to work around it and deal with it, said Price, an assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Puget Sound. But now they’re looking for help with a new homework assignment: generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT.
Price doesn’t see ChatGPT as a threat, but he’s not alone. Some math professors believe that AI, used correctly, could help enhance math instruction. And the technology comes at a time when math scores are at historically low levels nationwide and educators are questioning whether they should teach math differently.
AI can act as a tutor and provide instant feedback to students who are struggling. It helps teachers plan math lessons and create different math problems for different levels of instruction. You can also show sample her code to new computer programmers, saving them the tedious task of learning how to write basic code.
As schools across the country debate banning AI tools, some math and computer science teachers are open to the change due to the nature of their disciplines.
“Math has always evolved as technology has evolved,” Price said. Years ago, people used slide rules and logarithm tables to do multiplication. Then came the calculator.
With human-enabled technology in mind, Price teaches students skills by hand in her classes. Next, discuss the limitations of the technology they might want to use once they get home.
“Computers are very good at doing boring tasks,” Price says. “We don’t have to do all the heavy lifting. We can let the computer do it for us. And then interpret that answer and think about what that answer tells us about the decisions we need to make.” can do.”
He invites students to have fun looking for patterns, seeing how different ways to get different or the same answers, and how to translate those answers into decisions about the world. I’m thinking of getting it.
“ChatGPT, like the calculator, like the slide rule and all the technology that came before it, helps you understand the heart of mathematics, the real part,” Price said.
On the other hand, ChatGPT has its limitations. They can show you the correct steps to solve a math problem while giving you the wrong answer.
That’s because “we’re not really doing the math,” Price said. I’m just compiling fragments of writing that explain how other people have solved similar problems.
Min Sun, an education professor at the University of Washington, believes students should use ChatGPT like a personal tutor. If your students get lost in class and can’t understand a math operation, you can ask ChatGPT to explain it to you and provide some examples.
Khan Academy, a nonprofit educational organization that offers a collection of online learning tools and videos and has been your go-to for math homework for years, has created just that.
The tutor’s name is Kanmigo. Students can open it while solving a math problem to tell them they’re stuck.
Kristen DiCelbo, chief learning officer at Khan Academy, said students can talk to the AI tutor and tell the AI tutor what they don’t understand, and the AI tutor will help explain things.
“Instead of saying, ‘Here’s the answer,’ it says, ‘What’s the next step?'” or ‘What do you think we should do next?'” DiCerbo says. he said.
for math teachers
Sun, an education professor at California State University, wants teachers to use ChatGPT as their assistant to plan math lessons, give good feedback to students, and communicate with parents. Masu.
Teachers can ask AI, “What is the best way to teach this concept?” or “What are some common mistakes students make when learning this math concept?” or “What questions do students ask about this concept?”
Teachers can also ask ChatGPT to recommend different levels of math problems for students with different levels of conceptual proficiency, she said. This is especially helpful for teachers who are new to the profession or who have students with different needs, such as special education or English language learners, Sun said.
“The detail that ChatGPT sometimes provides is amazing,” Sun said. “It gives me an initial idea and possible problem areas for my students, so I can be more prepared before entering the classroom.”
Also, if your teacher already has a quality lesson plan, you can feed it into ChatGPT and ask them to create another lesson with a similar teaching style but with a different concept.
Sun hopes ChatGPT will also help teachers create more culturally appropriate word problems and help all students feel included.
“Current technology is actually a technical assistant that supports them, empowers them and amplifies their creative abilities,” Sun said. “In fact, it doesn’t replace their own agency, their own creativity, their own professionalism. They really need to keep that in mind.”
For computer science teachers
If you had asked Daniel Zingaro a year ago how he would evaluate his introductory computer science students, he would have told you, “We’re asking them to write code.”
But if you asked him now, the answer would be much more complex, says Zingaro, an associate professor at the University of Toronto.
Zingaro and Leo Porter, a computer science professor at the University of California, San Diego, wrote the book “Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming with GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT.” They believe that AI will allow introductory computer science classes to address big-picture concepts.
According to Porter and Zingaro, many beginning students get stuck writing very simple code. They never move on to more advanced questions. And even after completing the course, many still cannot write simple code.
“Not only is it not funny, it’s frustrating,” Porter added. There are some syntaxes that prevent the code from running properly, such as “He’s trying to build something, forgets the semicolon, and he ends up spending three hours looking for the missing semicolon.”
Since AI doesn’t make these mistakes, computer science professors can spend more time teaching more advanced skills.
Professors are now asking students to take a big problem and break it down into smaller questions or tasks that code needs to perform. We also ask students to test and debug code that has already been written.
“If you think about the big picture of what you want your students to do, you want them to write software that is meaningful to them,” Porter said. “And this process of creating software requires you to take these fairly large, often ill-defined problems and figure out how to break them down.”
Magdalena Balazinska, director of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, welcomes the advances in AI.
“AI support allows human software engineers to focus on the most interesting part of computer science: answering big questions in software design,” says Baladzynska. “AI allows humans to focus on creative tasks.”
Not all professors in the field think AI should be integrated into the curriculum. Some people, interviewed for a UC San Diego research paper and surveyed by Education Week, prefer to block or deny the use of ChatGPT and similar tools like Photomath, at least in the short term.
Zingaro and Porter insist that reading large amounts of AI-generated code doesn’t make them feel like they’re cheating. Rather, it is how students learn.
“Just as I believe that good writers read a lot of text, I believe that many programmers read a lot of code,” Zingaro said. “I think this is a very powerful learning method.”