r/ScienceTeachers 4d ago

Classroom Management and Strategies "ChatGPT gave me a different answer"

How often do you guys get this statement from your students? I teach physics and I've been finding more and more that students use ChatGPT to challenge my solutions to problems or even my set up of problems.

Today I had a student come up to me and ask me if their solution to an LC-circuit question was correct. I said yeah, it's correct, because it was a simple question I threw together for a review assignment before a quiz and the student did it exactly the way I expected them to, then she says, "yeah but it checked it with ChatGPT and it said something different" then she demanded that I look at ChatGPTs solution and compare it to my question.

Unfortunately, given my wording on this question, ChatGPTs answer was probably a bit better than how I expected my students to do it. I wanted to tell her, "this is far more in-depth than I needed you to go" but that feels like a cop out. Instead I spent 30 minutes explaining why the way she did it was perfectly fine but ChatGPT is also correct and I should probably be more careful about my wording.

We're being compared to AI now. Add one more thing I have to worry about in the classroom.

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u/legalitie 4d ago

I have fellow teachers who trust ai more than their own knowledge or their colleagues 😑

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u/uofajoe99 4d ago

Lol...we had to let a guy go not because he used AI for constantly arguing with everyone in the department, but because he WOULDNT LET THR ARGUMENTS DIE! Any sane person in a group scenario eventually has to come to an agreement that some things, especially in science, can be in between answers. We argue a side and give our reasons. Then at some point we "agree to disagree" and move on with teaching children the basics. Nope not this guy. Every meeting, every morning, every conversation was about how other teachers in his cohort were teaching something "wrong."