If our educational system has traditionally rewarded students for producing correct answers, how do we change it so that students recognize the value of actually understanding how they arrived at those answers?

AI is making the idea of self-directed learning harder to ignore. If a student can go to ChatGPT to get the answer, they can also go to ChatGPT to learn how to get the answer. Which one they do determines more than just what the AI policy should be. It might show us how much they value or not the material they are learning and whether or not they are motivated to learn it.

Self-directed learning is a skill. It can be taught. We can teach people how to identify what they know, identify what they don't know, choose a method for learning it, work through the problem, check their own understanding, and decide what to do next. We can teach people how to work through that process with ChatGPT, even if the AI volunteers the answer.

What we can't do is guarantee that students want to learn what we're trying to teach them. That's hard part, because it used to be that if a student wasn't motivated and they didn't do the work, they would leave it blank or not hand it in. Now if they aren't motivated, ChatGPT does the assignment for them.

How do we teach self-directed learning? How do we motivate kids to want to learn? How do we adjust our assessment methods so that the right answer isn't the only thing we're measuring?