KUCHING: There is no doubt that technology keeps evolving and provides much convenience in one’s daily life.
Take for instance, the Internet, which allows one to search and find any information almost instantaneously.
Then there is artificial intelligence (AI) which is transforming every walk of life and holding out the prospect of further boosting the work humans do.
For instance, today, there is this AI tool called ChatGPT. It is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI.
This ChatGPT, has the ability to communicate like a human, where it can provide answers and data when required with unbelievable ease.
Many are starting to use this platform to help them in their school assignments, how to structure questions for interviews and even how to write a poem or songs.
New Sarawak Tribune managed to speak to experts on whether ChatGPT has an impact on the education sector?
Senior lecturer at the Faculty of Language and Communication, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) Chuah Kee Man said that ChatGPT is a tool to help students learn.
“It is not worrying since it depends on the way we design the assessments. For instance, if writing essays alone, it would raise doubts on originality but what I would do would be, asking students to present orally on what they have written by providing evidence.
“ So this would teach students how to be responsible in using various tools like ChatGPT,” he said.
The expert in the fields of educational technology, computational linguistics, learning sciences and instructional design also echoed a Singapore university professor who said ChatGPT can actually help students ask better questions.
“As for my own research at the moment, it shows the potential of using ChatGPT for inquiry-based learning in which students can engage in deeper learning.
“However, this is related to how the lecturers design the task for learning. Instead of focusing on transmission of facts, lecturers can devise tasks that require students to make use of ChatGPT to solve real problems.
“From the responses generated by ChatGPT, students can be challenged to verify through fact-checking or evaluate the responses by critically arguing its validity,” he pointed out.
Asked whether he encouraged his students to use the ChatGPT, Chuah said he would as he uses the tool too.
“It becomes my ‘assistant’ in providing real-time feedback to students especially for some repetitive questions that would take a lot of my time if I were to answer one by one.
“At the same time, it also allows students to be more self-regulated in learning as ChatGPT can be like a virtual mentor that guides them for fundamental contents and as a lecturer I would be focusing on helping students to enhance their understanding through more critical tasks,” he said.
He also argued that ChatGPT cannot be labelled as a cheating tool, as there are many tools that can be used to engage in academic dishonesty, and it would be unfair to single out ChatGPT.
“In fact more advanced AI tools will appear in the near future. Are we then going to ban everything?
“I would focus more on greater advocacy efforts to educate students on ethics and integrity. Promote responsible use of AI tools like ChatGPT.
“Universities thus can ‘regulate to educate’ by having a clear provision on how such tools can be used for the benefits of teaching and learning rather than banning it,” he stressed.
Meanwhile, Dean, Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism Management, UCSI University, Sarawak campus, Christopher Wan Sageng said when ChatGPT emerged, it indeed raised the alarm for fellow academics.
“There are lots of questions in our minds on how such an application will impact the teaching and learning process.
“To think about it, it will definitely have its own pros and cons. As technology is getting advanced, the paradigm shift of teaching and learning processes has to be altered as well,” he said.
However, he said, as academicians, one cannot remain status quo in the teaching and learning delivery and it has to be progressive along with the current trend and surrounding.
“From my personal point of view, I’m not worried if students turn to ChatGPT to write up their essays.
“Personally, I see it as a learning curve for them to improve themselves in their writing and comprehend the specific subject matter.
“We have to embrace this emerging technology and proper guidance has to be provided to the students on how to utilise the system with the right intention,” he said.
ChatGPT, he said, is a powerful AI that generates quick responses on data or details required, therefore, with all the sources of information obtained from ChatGPT, it will in a way educate students faster where they could get the required information or details within a split second.
“Therefore, we as academicians would be able to nurture and guide those students on how to retrieve and use the information obtained to enhance their learning process,” he said.
Universities and each respective fellow academician, he said, need to embrace this sort of emerging technologies and change the means of assessment in order to capitalise on the technologies and to avoid cheating cases, especially in terms of report writing.
“There are various forms of assessment that could be carried out to evaluate students’ learning performance and a report or any form of writing assessment is not the only means for assessment.
“Hence, fellow academicians have to be creative in their assessment methodology in order to minimise cheating cases.
“This way, we would be able to maximise the usage of technologies as learning supporting tools and at the same time to increase learner competency and knowledge grasping,” he said.
Chuah said when it comes to ChatGPT there are pros and cons.
“The good side of it is that it can become a virtual assistant to both lecturers and students.
“It is useful in dealing with repetitive tasks which normally can take up quite a lot of time. For students, they can use ChatGPT as a tool to personalise their learning experience as it is very adaptive to their questions,” he said.
He also said it offers opportunities to lecturers and universities to rethink their assessment strategies, to focus more on what matters most in terms of measuring students’ competency beyond essays or written outputs.
“There are many other strategies to promote authentic assessments and ChatGPT has put lecturers out of this comfort zone to try those strategies,” he said.
On the disadvantages, he said, it can be a threat to learning if students are not guided on how to use it wisely.
“It may result in ‘blind usage’ without putting efforts to be more critical. Also, there are still doubts on how ChatGPT deals with personal data protection,” he said.
