How Will ChatGPT Affect Your Dyslexic Student’s Accommodations?!

Will your dyslexic kid lose their accommodations because of ChatGPT?

Hey everyone, we're Nick and Sonja and this is Dyslexia Journey, where we help you support the dyslexic kid in your life. And today, in our continuing series on ChatGPT, we're going to address the topic of ChatGPT and cheating and how that might affect your child's accommodations. So, there's a lot of concern, both in the media generally and that we're hearing teachers say and students talk about both, you know, at all levels of education.

There's a lot of concern about how ChatGPT is going to make it too easy for kids to cheat. And so, there's a lot of ways that this gets talked about, for example, that it can actually, like, write papers for them, it can give them answers to problems that they're doing for homework, things like that. And so, the response to this, in some areas, we're hearing some suggestion that in order to counteract the potential of cheating with ChatGPT, that some teachers in schools might actually move toward things like requiring all essays to be handwritten, and other things like that, that would dramatically affect our dyslexic kids and their accommodations.

Right, or dysgraphic kids as well, of course. And so, we wanted to take a look at this and sort of see what else is going on in the conversations around. And so, one of the articles I looked at that we'll put in the notes was from dyslexicadvantage.org. And they did have an example where this has been a problem for someone. They gave an example of a college student with dysgraphia who had to switch classes because a particular professor they had was making essays handwritten, and that wasn't going to work for that student, so they had to switch classes.

So, there are some cases like this. And in that particular article, there was a really good suggestion by the author, or by the authors, I guess, because it was the team who wrote it, which was that maybe instead, you know, students can still write on the computer but not have it be online. So, that's one option, right, if having it online and having access to ChatGPT is the issue. The other suggestion made was that maybe they could, you know, be assessed in a different way.

Like, if you had to defend your paper afterwards, or if you presented it, it would be clear if you're understanding what the topic is and if you really wrote it. But I think it's also important to note that most of what I found in this research was actually that a lot of teachers really aren't taking this view at all. So, for example, there was an English teacher quoted in a different article that I'll put also in the notes.

And so, let me just quote from that article for a moment. This teacher's last name was Crompton. So, this semester, she asked her students to use ChatGPT to generate an argument and then had them annotated according to how effective they thought the argument was for a specific audience. Then they turned in a rewrite based on their criticism. So, this is a really good example of ways to use ChatGPT that I found when I was researching this, where teachers are just being really creative and trying to actually maximize the learning and the deeper learning that can happen from using this technology.

So, there was another example of just, you know, the benefits of being able to access information, like we can already do that somewhat with teaching students how to Google particular topics. And then, but a lot with the actual writing. So, one particular other teacher mentioned that sometimes students have really difficulty writing a first draft. So, it isn't necessarily a problem even if they got a first draft from ChatGPT. Because, in their case, they really wanted to work with the revision part.

And so, I thought that was just really interesting that I've actually found a lot of creative perspectives from teachers on how they might use this and not really even worry almost about this cheating aspect at all. That's a really interesting perspective and that actually brings to mind other kind of technological advancements that we sort of take for granted now in schools. And the example that I was thinking about as you were talking about the writing example was actually graphing calculators.

And so, I think originally when graphing calculators came along, there might have been some concern about, oh, well, kids can just, you know, we're talking about more high school level here, high school and university level, obviously. But, oh, kids can just use that to cheat. They can just, you know, get their calculator, just solve the equations for them and so on. But, I think what we've seen in all math classes now in high school and college is that graphing calculators are incorporated just into the way the class is taught.

And, in fact, some of the homework assignments will often include something like, you know, graph this on your calculator and see what it looks like or use your calculator to solve the equation or whatever. And so, it's really a technological advancement that, yes, could be used for cheating if you're thinking of sort of an old way of doing things. But when incorporated into the curriculum is actually beneficial to the learning overall because there are so many benefits to a graphing calculator.

You can see what the graphs look like and do all sorts of things without having to do all that manual stuff by hand. And so, I think if we maybe can kind of take that same perspective, which it sounds like, as Sandy was saying, a lot of teachers already are, of this is another technological advancement. It's a tool and it's going to change, perhaps, some aspects of the way that schools and teachers have to approach things.

But actually embracing it and incorporating it into the curriculum is actually going to be more beneficial for the long run. So, I was actually really encouraged to hear that you found evidence that people are approaching it that way. Yeah. So, I think this is helpful to keep in mind, you know, particularly if you hear this talked about around, let's all keep in mind that there are a lot of creative ways we can use this.

And that it's really just another stage in the evolution of teaching and, you know, with new technologies and how it evolves over time. Yeah.

So, I guess some other things that we've thought about, maybe some suggestions for how teachers could, I guess, manage the sort of potential for cheating here. One idea is something that some teachers are already doing, which is the flipped classroom idea. And that is where you, I guess, teachers generally will prepare lectures ahead of time that the students can watch at home to kind of try to sort of get the initial look at the material.

And then they can then in class is where they're actually doing the work sort of under the supervision of the teacher. And so, there are many benefits to that. And, in fact, we did an interview a couple of months ago with a middle school science teacher that we can link to as well, where he talks about the benefits of a flipped classroom. But this, I think, can also help with the sort of potential for cheating with ChatGPT because when you have people doing their, quote, homework in the classroom under your supervision, you can get a much better sense of are they really understanding the material?

Are they really sort of grappling with it? Or are they just, you know, looking at the answers? Right. Exactly. So, just to circle back some of the ideas, and there will be endless more, and we'd love to hear more in the comments if you have some ideas of creative ways to use ChatGPT as well, just in changing the educational model a bit, would be this flipped classroom idea. And then also, as was mentioned in that other article, having other ways that the student can demonstrate their knowledge, whether it's presenting or defending an argument.

And then a very simple solution, of course, too, without even going into different kinds of techniques of teaching, would be if you can just have the computer that someone is using if they need to type offline. So, finally, we just had a few things that we wanted you to keep in mind as all of this conversation is swirling around and all these new ideas. So, number one that you probably gathered from this is that don't assume that your child's accommodations will be taken away.

You know, we found that maybe that's not going to be true in the larger conversation, though, of course, you might need to talk with an individual teacher at any given point. Definitely. But, as always, when you're talking to your child's teacher and their school, keep in mind that accommodations for your dyslexic kid are not a privilege. They are a right. And so, sometimes you have to stand firm about it. And this is perhaps going to become, in some instances, one of those cases with the fears about CHAT-GPT.

But I think, as we're all familiar with already from our experiences, demanding accommodations has never been as straightforward as one could hope it is some. So, this may present a new argument that teachers and schools might use against accommodations. But the sort of overall discussion, I think, unfortunately, here is not new. As always, we just have to keep advocating for our kids. Right. And then remembering, as always, too, that it's important to work with your teacher, the teachers, your kids' teachers in the school.

And, like, don't assume, you know, maybe they just haven't thought creatively about it. Right. So, you can try to work with them and explain this position. And then remembering, kind of overall, in terms of if you were talking to a teacher about it or just for ourselves, remembering that demonstrating the learning and that actual deep learning is always the key. So, if we can all be more creative and flexible about how we think about that and remembering that that's the most important thing, then that will go a long way.

Yeah, definitely. So, let us know if you have any comments or thoughts on this, any creative ideas on how, you know, teaching could adjust to CHAT-GPT. We'd love to hear about it.