Fear of AI, ChatGPT and Student Essay Fraud? Nope. Leverage AI to enhance student learning

(Disclaimer: I am a molecular geneticist and Physics teacher, more qualified to write about Bernoulli's Principle than essays on Beowulf)

My colleagues, History & English Teachers fearing the approach of AI/ChatGPT in the classroom, and the specter of endless rounds of student cheat-detect-cheat-give up- I quit teaching: why not just work on reinventing the written assessment a bit, and leverage AI as much as possible towards good, and less towards evil? The key is enhancing student learning, not mastering our AI cheat detection fidelity, IMHO.

My idea: in class verbal presentation as the assessment. To inform the presentation, AI will be used at home (school) as a personalized tutor, guide, to go deeper, and to help inform their creative human neural network response to prompt. AI can't write the essay, can't do the test.

Plan: Give a student an individualized assignment, then send them home for computer-based exploration and writing alongside an "AI Personalized Tutor." This creative part is student's human neural network plus Machine Assisted learning, then translated back through the student human neural network into creative answers to prompts. Create refined notes. Based on written documents created, the student does a thorough review of what they created (with Chatbot tutor) and they exhaustively rehearse their prompt responses for a class oral presentation, graded per rubric.

The MAIN IDEA is to immerse the students in Montessori-esque "I choose my area, I teach myself" take-responsibility for learning milieu, make them study, learn, and write enough to thoroughly answer the prompts, then they have to SHOW they know their own writing and learning by discussing it class - essentially teaching their peers.

(Smile: if you are sufficiently middle aged as I am, you may recognize this idea as a repackaged 1970s Oral Book Report - updated with leveraging AI assist to help access the literature.)

Details below of a sample lesson, which only teachers will probably read...

1. Assignment: Teacher (or student/teacher?) suggests at least three prompts: A) What is the setting, timing, etc. of your idea concept event literature character, and most importantly, HOW YOU AND OTHER TEENS CAN RELATE to this? Use analogies, examples, and your lived experiences to answer. B) Describe three (or more, teacher determines) key issues or events, etc. and HOW and WHY THEY SPOKE TO YOU AS A PERSON. C) RELATE these concepts to something else we learned in this class or (better yet) another class.
2. Learn/Study at home: Using ChatGPT and Google: prior in class, or at home, LEVERAGE the power AI to be the student's personal tutor. She thus gets to dig deep in Chaucer, the tale, the verses, a comparison of Geoffrey Chaucer's middle English and its odd words, their translations, the idea of a pilgrimage, etc. For a mildly curious student, it might be a stimulating, self-guided exploration. Clever assistance from AI could even place her on a sort of "ChaucerLand Ride" at Disneyland. It might be even be fun! Goal: pure student-driven exploration of knowledge.
3. Oral Presentation as the final product: a 2–3-minute oral presentation IN CLASS for each student on an idea, chapter or book of literature. Mainly from memory, with ability to riff on the topic - because they will hopefully KNOW their material backward and forwards. No computer, no reading off AI, no slides/PPT, just demonstration of mastery by verbal delivery.

Let's make AI useful to student learning, not scary to educational personnel.

Notes: The complexity and time allowed for presentation should vary by subject matter. Chunks like paragraphs, not whole units or books, will work best. Although the composed-from-scratch and highlighted quotes essay, patiently typed into the 1987 Cedro Dorm Mac SE 30's 512 K memory, about Plato's Allegory of the Cave is beloved to my memory, it's hard to get the same educational benefit when unscrupulous students are able to use ChatGPT write their essay wholesale, thus learning nothing. - Michael Copass, Physics teacher and personal tutor, San Diego/Encinitas