While reports Australian teachers are more likely to be using Artificial Intelligence (AI) than their counterparts around the world, the sheer disruption this technology is creating for education brings to mind the ‘double-edged’ sword idiom.
On one hand, the automation and insight that AI provides teachers and students is profound. On the other, there are concerns that schools may be granting power over how knowledge is created to the tech companies producing generative AI tools.
In an age when young people can simply turn to ChatGPT when the dreaded ‘mental blank’ strikes, a growing concern has been how schools will encourage the practice of critical thinking. Indeed, this has already been seen with multiple reports over the last two years of students using the Large Language Model (LLM) to complete essays and other classwork.
With LLMs growing ever more sophisticated and widely used, can we still argue that the essay has a place in the age of AI?
Dr Meg Brayshaw, a Lecturer in Australian Literature, School of Art, Communication and English at the University of Sydney, says illusion AI gives of seamless and instantaneous knowledge generation suggests that we don’t need to build up basic skills of reading, writing and thinking at all.
“Google’s NotebookLM has even been marketed to academics with the promise that it can do the job of synthesising and summarising research for you—when that work is foundational to what we do and shouldn’t be outsourced,” Dr Brayshaw told The Educator. “Moreover, AI-generated information is harder and harder to escape but it still hallucinates, distorts, and confirms biases.
When asked about the relevance and integrity of essays in the age of AI, Dr Brayshaw said the growing influence of technology has prompted a timely re-examination of what essays are truly meant to achieve.
“The essay is absolutely not dead in the age of AI; in fact, AI presents us with an opportunity to reinvigorate the essay by returning to its roots as a form of humanistic enquiry, self-expression, and ethical knowledge creation,” she said. “I would argue that the way we teach essays has moved too far away from this.”
Dr Brayshaw said today’s essay instruction often prioritises structure over substance, leaving little space for authentic expression.
“We’ve developed incredibly prescriptive models like the five-paragraph structure and the TEEL paragraph, and the HSC English examination rewards students for their ability to execute these models under time pressure,” she said. “But this is exactly the type of writing that AI excels at—ChatGPT can produce a passable HSC essay in ten seconds.”
However, Dr Brayshaw said this can be viewed as an opportunity rather than a threat.
“How can we teach writing as exploratory and iterative? How can provide students with opportunities to demonstrate their capacities for critical thinking and fluent expression in more authentic ways?”