Students should learn purposeful writing in the age of new technologies , according to Dr Lucinda McKnight . Picture : Supplied .
We have to reconnect with what writing really is .
Looking ahead
Will ChatGPT usher the end of written tests ?
By Emilie Lauer
An education expert has argued the emergence of writing bots like ChatGPT will put an end to the standardised writing tests in Australia .
Deakin University senior lecturer in pedagogy and curriculum Dr Lucinda McKnight said test such as NAPLAN are not reflective of the “ real writing world ”.
“ The current NAPLAN writing test focuses on an empty , meaningless product with no context or purpose ,” she said .
“ It is just training kids to be robots , and we already know robots are doing it better .”
Dr McKnight joined Education Review to discuss the future of writing in the world of AI .
ER : What are your thoughts on the current NAPLAN writing test ? LM : Expert opinion is pretty solid on the NAPLAN writing test around Australia , that it is not fit for purpose and that it needs to be withdrawn . So we ’ ve had several major investigations into it , reports into it by academics working together across different states and territories , and they have found that this test is deeply flawed and yet , it still remains .
I think that I would be quite accurately representing the concerns of lots of academics in talking about this , and teachers as well , because our research is based on what teachers are saying and thinking and feeling about this as well , and that ’ s a voice that hasn ’ t been heard loudly enough in this space .
In what ways is the NAPLAN test flawed ? The test is flawed in so many ways because it ’ s not a real writing situation . We want students to be doing real writing . We want them to have a context for their writing , a real purpose , a rhetorical purpose to their writing - which they want to achieve something or communicate something . How can you assess writing if you ’ re not thinking about kids ’ writing for an audience ? So this NAPLAN test has led to this vacuous sort of empty , hollow kind of just performative school writing , which is not connected to writing in the real world .
How can we modify the writing test to evaluate student ’ s skills better ? Something that a lot of people don ’ t realise is that the NAPLAN writing test doesn ’ t actually map very well onto the national curriculum . I mean , for example , the national curriculum has stuff about multimodality written all through it . About the nature of writing and creating , being multimodal , drawing on different modes , that means , and involving things like creating images and blending image , sound and text , and all that kind of thing . And that ’ s just another example of something that NAPLAN doesn ’ t test at all and doesn ’ t value .
When we think of our students moving ahead into their careers and the kinds of digital creations that they ’ re going to be making and digital communications that they ’ re doing already , think of what blogging , for example , how blogging is used in industry with people combining image and texts , or creating podcasts . Real meaningful industry linked kinds of writing , need to be brought into what kids are doing in the classroom and also into the way that they ’ re being tested .
You ’ ve argued that ChatGPT will end the NAPLAN writing test . Why ? I ’ m really excited about the advent of ChatGPT , and people might not be aware , but these AI writers have been around for some years now . But with ChatGPT , there ’ s a sort of chatbot interface put on the top of GPT , and so it makes it easier for people to access .
It ’ s made everyone wake up pretty quickly to the fact that these things are out there and that robots in effect can write human quality writing . For those who haven ’ t tried it , if you put a prompt in there , if you put something in like , “ Write me an essay on a bots that meets all the NAPLAN marking criteria .” And you describe the marking criteria and put it in there and describe all the formulaic ways that you have to write for NAPLAN . You ’ re not allowed to have more than three ideas or three steps in your narrative . You have to do it in five paragraphs . There has to be an introduction and a conclusion that fit certain parameters , all those sorts of things . And in about two seconds , this machine can write
26 | educationreview . com . au