“You won’t always have a calculator with you. Learn to do math in your head,” said the mathematics teacher while snatching your calculator away. While I am a big proponent of mental math, I don’t want it to be forced. For the simple reason that no one has to. After all, everybody has a calculator in their pocket, much to the dismay of the mathematics teacher.

The Menace of ChatGPT

Not even a couple of months have passed since the ChatGPT launched, yet teachers all over the world are now terrified of ChatGPT. Can you blame them, though? After all, it’s simple to see how the tool could be abused. Students might submit essays and assignments just by entering prompts at ChatGPT. In conjunction with other AI assisted writing and plagiarism checkers, students might produce a highly coherent and plagiarism-free writing sample in a matter of minutes. These samples would be indistinguishable, if not superior, to those submitted by hardworking and honest students. Essentially, take-home assignments cannot be utilized to assess and reward subject knowledge. This is quite troubling for educators.

Educators Fight Back

These AI written-text generator tools have the potential to bring about a generational shift in learning. That is indeed a challenge to the status quo. And the school administrators are starting to take this challenge head on. Responses include curriculum overhaul to increase emphasis on oral exams, live in-class internet-free exams, and group projects. The New York City Public School system went as far as blocking ChatGPTl from their Wi-Fi networks. While the reactions are predictable, they are not all encompassing. For example, NYC public schools can’t stop students from using their smartphones to access the tool. Can they do better than this? Can they even embrace ChatGPT and disrupt the teaching model itself? It turns out they can! Like flip the teaching on its head.

Flipped Classroom Model

“Flipped Learning is a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter” (The Flipped Learning Network, 2014).

That may sound complicated, but it simply means that students complete “schoolwork at home and homework at school.” Still vague? Let’s give it another shot. In the flipped classroom model, students complete the lower level of cognitive work, such as reading assignments, financial modeling, and so on, before class. When they come into the class, they engage in higher levels of cognitive work, such as addressing a real or fictional problem in collaboration with teachers and peers. Now, that does sound familiar. Ever heard of Harvard Business School’s “case-based” method? Students are essentially placed in the shoes of case protagonists and are required to offer a well-articulated and reasoned recommendation. However, outside of business schools, case-based methods are not that popular.

Embracing The Inevitable AI era

The reality is that students will use artificial intelligence in some form or another in their working lives. Just like we use calculators for the simplest things, including calculating tips. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could start using AI tools in the classroom right away? For example, we can let students use ChatGPT to learn all of the theory concepts at home, take positions based on the information, obtain supporting arguments for their positions, and so on. I bet that will lead to a much better classroom discussion than what we have ever seen.

What do you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!