Back in 2023, I was learning for the IELTS exam (a certificate for English language proficiency). In my country Vietnam, there’s a myriad of language training centers providing IELTS preparation courses. If you want to have a teacher from these centers to guide you through the exam preparation process, you would have to pay a hefty amount. Determined to get a good score without having to spend a lot of money, I embarked on a self-learning journey. I was confident in achieving my goal. After all, Google gives you all the materials for free; all you need to do is put in the effort to learn. What could be so hard about it, right?
It turned out to be not that simple. Out of the 4 tested skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing), I was particularly bad at writing. And I soon realized, trying to self-study writing was not remotely easy. I would often find myself stuck for hours just trying to write a 250-word academic essay. The hardest part was to find a way to get feedbacks on my writing. I remember spending hours searching among hundreds of sample essays on Google just to pick out 1 piece of writing that was fairly good. At that point, I really wished that I’d had a teacher, or someone that could give me improvement feedbacks.
In the process of trying to find a way to improve, I came across the idea of using ChatGPT to give me feedbacks on my essay. I had never used it before, so I was curious on how effectively it could perform. I was absolutely amazed. Not only did it give me valuable feedbacks, it also made sample essays for my reference. This may sound like it’s nothing right now, but back then when I was not aware of ChatGPT’s capability, I was in awe. From that point onwards, I started to use ChatGPT in every aspect of my self-learning journey. I asked it to grade my work, provide feedbacks, create samples, summarize theories,… ChatGPT became my personal teacher, and helped me to eventually get a really good score (with my writing score as the most improved one). All I had to pay was a 20$ subscription. Compared to the average fee of 1,000$ charged by training centers, that is a 98% cost reduction!
Besides ChatGPT, I also used NotionAI to generate additional samples as an extra source of reference. Currently, being a Master’s student in BIM, I’m exploring more AI tools and incorporate more of them in my learning and daily life. It is undeniable that AI will continue to transform the way we learn, for both better and for worse. AI could help us quickly gather, filter and summarize crucial information, with highly-tailored answers that suit our need. If we utilize it to enhance our learning and brainstorming process, AI could make us become proficient in an area faster than ever.
However, GAI also poses a great threat to our thinking ability. Over-reliance on using AI for everything could lead us to gradually lose our cognitive ability. We will become lazy people, who are lazy to think. Therefore, the question is not “Should we use AI?” anymore, but “How should we use it effectively?”. The answer to this question will likely shape the future of human kind.
I really like how you explain in this blog post what happened to you during studying for your exam and how ChatGPT became a virtual teacher for you. I definitely have been in similar situations where I had to use ChatGPT to help me with studying or improving my writing skills. I believe that the fact that we can replace costly tutors makes learning more accessible to people and I think that is one of the benefits that we get from AI.
Nice blog! Me myself I also emarked on a similar journey using ChatGPT as a teacher. Last year I did another Master (Marketing Management) and during the Masters I discoverd how easily ChatGPT could make summaries of academic papers or Harvard Business Reviews. This year however, I also learned that ChatGPT is even capable of understanding whole slide decks. I was also amazed by how well ChatGPT can explain concepts in detail.
However, as you mention in your last sentences, I am also worried about how much people will rely on tools like ChatGPT. For myself I am also noticing that I am relying on it more and more. This week I listened a podcast and someone said that maybe we should head back to the area where writings and exams should be taken on paper again, ensuring you have to know the content yourself. I am not sure if this is the solution, but it does address a big problem (people relying too much on AI). On the other hand, the world is changing and why do we still need to remember things by heart if computers and AI can remember those things for us.
As you can tell, I am also not sure about the right direction to go, however I do think it is a really interesting topic.
Keep up the good work!
I think it is wonderful that Chat GPT helped you so much during your studies for the IELTS exam, I had not yet thought of using GPT chat in that way, by providing feedback. I think this could be an excellent outcome for many students, and I am curious about the quality and feedback options of Chat GPT.
As you state in your essay, chat GPT is increasingly used in education. Your writing experience is a good example of a postive impact that Chat GPT has on a person’s writing while also being cost reductive. However, I think Chat GPT can also have a negative impact on people’s writing skills. Many people nowadays use chat GPT to write entire texts such as emails and essays, but this does not teach them to think about the content and writing style themselves. I think this could lead to a problem in the future, as people will learn less and less to formulate sentences correctly.
This post is very relatable and nicely written. As an MBA student at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore who is currently on exchange at RSM, I’ve had a fair bit of long readings to do. On the subjects, which are out of my comfort zone with long readings, I have been using tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, ChatPDF to generate summaries for my revision. I have often used ChatGPT to generate detailed notes for me, wherever I am lacking understaning. ChatPDF reades through long PDFs and generates short summaries of key ideas that I should be knowing, which helps out a lot during the revision.
However, I have seen that such AI tools don’t work well with any numerical stuff and changes their views. When I don’t have the exam solutions, I tend to use AI tools to help me check my answers, but often these aren’t reliable. On asking the AI tool, why not the other option, the AI tool changes its answer, which is annoying. I feel more development is still needed on this front.
Also, for case based learning, it can sometimes bias your views, so after generating my own, I give prompts to see if I was missing anything in my though process, where it performs well.
As a learning tool, it is awesome. Also, I share excel tips on Instagram on @excelinsider. So, as a teaching tool as well, it helps me quickly generatre questions on Excel for my audience to engage with.