National Foundation for Educational Research’s (NFER’s) Helen Poet shares the latest findings on using ChatGPT to support lesson preparation, and the implications for school and college leaders.

AI: Help or hinderance?

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools and colleges has been a hot topic since the launch of freely available AI tools such as ChatGPT, which was made publicly available in November 2022.

Putting aside any worries about pupils’ use of AI to complete assignments, concerns also abound about the quality and accuracy of AI-generated outputs, particularly if being used to teach in schools and colleges, and whether these tools may affect the role of teachers.

Use of AI has increased quickly. A Teacher Tapp survey in August last year (tinyurl.com/yrvsrbuh) suggested 57% of teachers are using AI tools to help with their work, with this proportion likely to continue to increase.

Funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the Hg Foundation, we set out to understand teachers’ use of AI for lesson planning and whether it has any impact on teacher workload.

In December last year we reported the results (tinyurl.com/58s9adwm), which found teachers who had used ChatGPT saved time when preparing for lessons compared to teachers not using any generative AI.

Teachers saved time

Teachers randomly allocated to be in the ChatGPT group reduced their lesson planning time by 31%, on average, compared to the teachers asked not to use any generative AI. This is the equivalent of about 25 minutes per week. This might not sound much, but in the trial, we were only looking at Year 7 and Year 8 science lessons (which represented about five hours of teaching per week for our teachers). Within this planning requirement, teachers only used ChatGPT for about a third of those lessons, to help with one or two elements (rather than planning whole lessons). So even though they used it for a relatively small amount of their planning, they still saved time.

We encouraged teachers to follow their allocation, but they were free to use ChatGPT as little or as much as they liked and record actual use in a diary. This means these findings are likely to reflect actual patterns of practice outside of the research project, suggesting they are a useful benchmark for teachers and leaders.

Saving time is all very well but what did teachers do with this time? Some teachers said they used it for other tasks relating to teaching, while others were able to reduce their workload. This is extremely encouraging, given the widely reported challenges around teacher workload.

Quality was maintained

A panel of experienced science teachers – who didn’t know what the project was about – ranked a sample of lesson resources produced during the project. Analysis of these rankings found there was no difference in quality between the two groups. This of course is reassuring, as saving time would not be worth it if the lessons produced with ChatGPT were of lower quality or, worse still, scientifically inaccurate. The sample of resources was limited, so there is some caution around this result. We and other researchers will need to continue to consider this in any similar future research.

Some teachers benefited more than others

As might be expected, we found that teachers more confident in their own technology skills saw greater time savings, suggesting they were able to make greatest use of ChatGPT’s potential. School and college leaders should consider whether less technologically confident teachers could benefit from additional support in using AI to realise a similar benefit.

The other group who saved more time when using ChatGPT was teachers less confident in the subject matter (for example, non-specialists). While this is another encouraging result, it is important to remember that all outputs from AI need to be checked for accuracy, and this element is potentially a more time-consuming step for teachers less familiar with the subject matter.

Things to consider when introducing the use of AI for lesson planning and preparation:

1. USE FREELY AVAILABLE SUPPORT AND GUIDANCE such as the guide teachers were supplied with in our trial – teachingwithchatgpt.org.uk

2. ENCOURAGE SHARING OF PRACTICE AND TIPS BETWEEN THE TEAM. Using ChatGPT and other AI tools can be an intuitive process. However, to get the most out of AI, users should interact with it and refine their instructions or requests to tailor the outputs to their needs. In our trial, few teachers experimented with different prompts to refine the outputs. Sharing learning across the team may help teachers, particularly those less confident with technology, to make the most of AI.

3. AS WITH LESSON PREPARATION THAT DOES NOT USE CHATGPT OR OTHER AI, TEACHERS SHOULD CONTINUE TO USE THEIR PROFESSIONAL JUDGEMENT ABOUT WHERE ITS USE WOULD BE MOST USEFUL.We saw in the trial that, in practice, teachers used ChatGPT as another item in their toolbox, employing it as appropriate for specific elements of preparation rather than a wholesale replacement of all that had come before. Typically, teachers found it most useful for coming up with ideas for lesson activities, creating quizzes, or creating cover work. Some teachers found it useful for adapting the level of materials to aid differentiation within a class, or adapting for different ability classes, by providing ChatGPT with a reading age or using it to come up with creative activities to engage and interest pupils.

4. A KEY CONSIDERATION FOR ALL USERS OF AI IS THAT EVERYTHING THAT GOES INTO CHATGPT IS SAVED AND FEEDS THE MODEL, SO IT IS IMPORTANT THAT PERSONAL DATA INCLUDING PUPIL NAMES ARE NOT PART OF THE PROMPTS.:This is one of the reasons why the guide advises against using it for writing student reports.

Helen Poet
Research Director at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER)
@TheNFER

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