Education in modern age
Amjad Mehmood
—Technological revolutions have reshaped the landscape of education sector likewise other segments of life in the 21st century. The role of modern ICT tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI) based applications is significantly increased in modern-day education. Educationists worldwide have expressed divergent opinions about the use of technology and AI tools in classrooms and research.
The COVID-19 pandemic had forced students, teachers, researchers, and academic institutions to embrace the use of technology to continue educational activities in the most challenging times. However, there was a continuous debate on the responsible use of technology in learning process so that younger generation does not lose interest in individually motivated knowledge gain. The use of technology in education was supported at large by the academicians by adopting a constructive and positive approach to pedagogy.
Artificial Intelligence Text Generators (AITGs) are the most recent technological evolution and a real-time challenge for academia. Earlier this year people heard about ChatGPT which generates text by asking questions in seconds like a chatbot but actually this AI tool is more than a chatbot. It can generate articles, summaries, essays, and even codes in a few seconds. Students and researchers can easily use ChatGPT for their assignments, online evaluations, and education-related other tasks. Unethical use of this technology by the students has full capacity to diminish the learning process and objectives. Considering its implications in education, the big question is ‘Do we adopt or resist this technology’?
Before learning more about ChatGPT, a brief introduction to this amazing tool would provide insight to readers. Initially, OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2019, and then in late November 2022 an updated version of this conversational chatbot was released by using Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF). It works with algorithms and is trained to generate human-like text. It gives answers to users’ questions, provides information, and engages in discussions in natural language. Customer service chatbots, virtual assistance, conversational interfaces for web and mobile apps, content generation for social media, and chatbot scripting for marketing or entertainment purposes are the values of this AI tool. The unique characteristics of ChatGPT include record keeping of previous conversations, provision of follow-up corrections, and declining of inappropriate requests, while the limitations of the tool include occasional generation of incorrect information, chances of producing harmful instruction or biased content, and very limited knowledge of events occurred after the year 2021.
The ever-growing trend of ChatGPT use in academia has triggered a debate about its pros and cons. The academicians are required to think creatively to introduce changes in content and skills they intend to give to their students. They can embrace the AITGs including ChatGPT as a facilitating tool to optimize the students’ learning processes. The educators would also be required to learn how to deal with the use of ChaptGPT in a classroom without compromising the traditional teaching methods. Centuries ago, the Gutenberg printing press, then Google did some years before, and now AITGs are disrupting the human mind in the cognition process. The future of ChatGPT in academia is yet to be decided; however, the viewpoints of seasoned educators and researchers can shed some light on the topic.
Professor Alexis Weedon, Director of the Research Institute for Media Arts and Performance at the University of Bedfordshire, United Kingdom. She is the author, co-author of several books, and a huge log of research articles in worldwide renowned journals is on her credit. Her research domains include cross-media publishing, new media, and related areas such as new media writing, gaming, and publishing.
While sharing her views about the use of ChatGPT in academics, she said “As academics, we help students learn and that includes learning to use technology appropriately. AI has such potential in the world to help development. There is a concern that it can be misused and we all need to take responsibility for our use and application of new technology. Using ChatGPT to do your learning assignments is cheating as it is not assessing your own progress. However, using AI to solve a problem, critically evaluating its strengths and weaknesses as a solution is using the technology effectively. ChatGPT produces readable text from existing sources, but it is not creative or innovative. It is not personal and does not reflect your own unique experience”.
To prevent the dominance or misuse of ChatGPT in education and research, she said, “Universities are training staff in new modes of assessment to prevent cheating. This may mean more exams or time-based assessments in invigilated spaces. A lot of learning now is not about the recall, it’s about applying knowledge, critical and creative thinking.” She added there will be greater emphasis on unique and creative solutions not the written essay in the future and this triggers a question too. Is it the end of the essay? Further explaining her qualm, she added “It’s a new frontier and will lead to new ways of assessing learning. We may get more visual, verbal, and creative ways of demonstrating learning. There are technologies which will assess the extent of plagiarism by text matching. I think we will see an increased reliance on these but we will also see the return of the invigilated examination in a room.”
Mr. Muhstaq Bilal is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern Denmark’s Hans Christian Andersen Center. He holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Binghamton University. His research work has appeared in academic journals of world literature & comparative literature studies, The Washington Post, and LA Times. He is very active on Twitter and shares tips on how to use AI apps for academic purposes. On Twitter, he provided complete guidelines on limitations of ChatGPT and shared the details of several other powerful AI apps which generate more authentic and reliable text. He believes due to a hyper use of ChatGPT, there are hundreds of AI apps are being released every week and few of them are purely for academic purposes including Jenni AI, Paperpal, Casper, ChatPDF, Audiopen, SciSpace, etc.,
Sharing his views about the use of ChatGPT for academic purposes, he believes that proper use can save a lot of time and effort. At the same time, he admonishes the students and researchers about merely academic use of ChatGPT as the app is not designed for academic purposes and frequently generates fake citations. He opined that “ChatGPT is a powerful tool but not without limitations. It can do many things but it can’t think for you.” He suggested that students and researchers should educate themselves about the limitations of app for the optimum use of its capabilities to take appropriate advantages. He pointed out a few dumb ways of using ChatGPT in academics which include, asking to write content for essays, articles, dissertations, etc., asking for citations and references, outsourcing self-thinking to ChatGPT, not taking ChatGPT prompts seriously and over-relying on ChatGPT.
Understandably, educators have shown concerns about the risks of this technology in teaching and evaluating students. Plagiarism or unethical use of technology in academic tasks, biased or inaccurate information on certain topics to perpetuate stereotypes, dwindling problem-solving ability, and critical thinking in students due to overreliance on ChatGPT are vital apprehensions. While at the same time, it offers intriguing opportunities for education if used sensibly. The emergence of new technologies is a daylight fact and academia would essentially require a transition into new spheres for the development of competencies, unique experience, and technical agility. The bigger benefit of technology in education is knowledge acquisition which has democratized access to information. Threats are obvious but the opportunities have equally considerable worth. ChaptGPT can improve students’ familiarity with AI and its adequate use. It can be used in training to boost communication techniques in a more effective manner. It has the ability to reshape the online learning process. It can also assist academicians in providing an additional and more engaging resource to students for a better learning experience.
There are people who advocate the unidirectional approach in education by restricting it to typical classroom boundaries and have previously shown their opposition to the use of laptops, mobile phones, and other similar technologies in education. A significant willingness also exists to welcome emerging technologies and their use in education to step into the future. Educators and institutions should analyze both angles of opportunities and risks by keeping a focus on learning objectives as it is high time to decide whether to resist or adopt this technology in education.
Professor Alexis Weedon, Director of the Research Institute for Media Arts and Performance at the University of Bedfordshire, United Kingdom. She is the author, co-author of several books, and a huge log of research articles in worldwide renowned journals is on her credit. Her research domains include cross-media publishing, new media, and related areas such as new media writing, gaming, and publishing.
While sharing her views about the use of ChatGPT in academics, she said “As academics, we help students learn and that includes learning to use technology appropriately. AI has such potential in the world to help development. There is a concern that it can be misused and we all need to take responsibility for our use and application of new technology. Using ChatGPT to do your learning assignments is cheating as it is not assessing your own progress. However, using AI to solve a problem, critically evaluating its strengths and weaknesses as a solution is using the technology effectively. ChatGPT produces readable text from existing sources, but it is not creative or innovative. It is not personal and does not reflect your own unique experience”.
To prevent the dominance or misuse of ChatGPT in education and research, she said, “Universities are training staff in new modes of assessment to prevent cheating. This may mean more exams or time-based assessments in invigilated spaces. A lot of learning now is not about the recall, it’s about applying knowledge, critical and creative thinking.” She added there will be greater emphasis on unique and creative solutions not the written essay in the future and this triggers a question too. Is it the end of the essay? Further explaining her qualm, she added “It’s a new frontier and will lead to new ways of assessing learning. We may get more visual, verbal, and creative ways of demonstrating learning. There are technologies which will assess the extent of plagiarism by text matching. I think we will see an increased reliance on these but we will also see the return of the invigilated examination in a room.”
Mr. Muhstaq Bilal is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern Denmark’s Hans Christian Andersen Center. He holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Binghamton University. His research work has appeared in academic journals of world literature & comparative literature studies, The Washington Post, and LA Times. He is very active on Twitter and shares tips on how to use AI apps for academic purposes. On Twitter, he provided complete guidelines on limitations of ChatGPT and shared the details of several other powerful AI apps which generate more authentic and reliable text. He believes due to a hyper use of ChatGPT, there are hundreds of AI apps are being released every week and few of them are purely for academic purposes including Jenni AI, Paperpal, Casper, ChatPDF, Audiopen, SciSpace, etc.,
Sharing his views about the use of ChatGPT for academic purposes, he believes that proper use can save a lot of time and effort. At the same time, he admonishes the students and researchers about merely academic use of ChatGPT as the app is not designed for academic purposes and frequently generates fake citations. He opined that “ChatGPT is a powerful tool but not without limitations. It can do many things but it can’t think for you.” He suggested that students and researchers should educate themselves about the limitations of app for the optimum use of its capabilities to take appropriate advantages. He pointed out a few dumb ways of using ChatGPT in academics which include, asking to write content for essays, articles, dissertations, etc., asking for citations and references, outsourcing self-thinking to ChatGPT, not taking ChatGPT prompts seriously and over-relying on ChatGPT.
Understandably, educators have shown concerns about the risks of this technology in teaching and evaluating students. Plagiarism or unethical use of technology in academic tasks, biased or inaccurate information on certain topics to perpetuate stereotypes, dwindling problem-solving ability, and critical thinking in students due to overreliance on ChatGPT are vital apprehensions. While at the same time, it offers intriguing opportunities for education if used sensibly. The emergence of new technologies is a daylight fact and academia would essentially require a transition into new spheres for the development of competencies, unique experience, and technical agility. The bigger benefit of technology in education is knowledge acquisition which has democratized access to information. Threats are obvious but the opportunities have equally considerable worth. ChaptGPT can improve students’ familiarity with AI and its adequate use. It can be used in training to boost communication techniques in a more effective manner. It has the ability to reshape the online learning process. It can also assist academicians in providing an additional and more engaging resource to students for a better learning experience.
There are people who advocate the unidirectional approach in education by restricting it to typical classroom boundaries and have previously shown their opposition to the use of laptops, mobile phones, and other similar technologies in education. A significant willingness also exists to welcome emerging technologies and their use in education to step into the future. Educators and institutions should analyze both angles of opportunities and risks by keeping a focus on learning objectives as it is high time to decide whether to resist or adopt this technology in education.