The rapidly evolving AI landscape for education

By : Michael Gibb

Unless you have just returned from an intergalactic mission, you will know that discussions around AI in education, and almost every aspect of daily life, have sharpened with the appearance of the chatbot software ChatGPT last November.

Despite concerns about privacy and accuracy, ChatGPT can answer an incredible range of questions using natural, human-like language, promoting educators in particular to voice concerns over how this enhanced level of AI might impact education, as a force for good or as the harbinger of something less attractive.

“Universities are already beginning to grapple with the accelerated pace of AI development,” says Professor Kenneth Lo Kam-wing of the Department of Chemistry and concurrently the Director of the Talent and Education Development Office (TED) at CityU.

Professor Lo chaired an on-site forum in April on “The Rapid Evolving Landscape of AI in University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment” to further develop the conversation about AI within the higher education field.

This TED event brought together, in person and online, 130 CityU faculty members, students, administrators, and experts as far afield as Cairo and New York.

Professor Lo says the aim of the forum was to help establish a cognitive foundation on which we can make intelligent, considered choices about AI in the higher education sector.

A key theme voiced by participants when reflecting on the impact that AI was having, and would continue to have, within education was the need to recognise that while we don’t have all the answers now, we need to stay student-centred and reaffirm the fundamental value of education as a process rather than merely product.

Professor Kenneth Lo Kam-wing “This is an inflexion point and it offers us some really good opportunities to think about what we do in terms of teaching, in terms of learning, but also what is necessary to benefit the students, to benefit society at large,” says Dr Wesley Curtis, Head of the Chan Feng Men-ling Chan Shuk-lin Language Centre at CityU. He stresses that AI is going to impact teaching and learning for generations to come.

Panellists were also keen to unpack how students could use AI in their learning and how teachers could make the most of the myriad possibilities on offer. This was a point picked up by Dr Crusher Wong, Senior Manager (e-Learning) in the Office of the Chief Information Officer at CityU.

“The important point is that when instructors and students use such tools, they use them in a productive way,” he says, warning that the privacy issue must be considered at all times.

All the panellists agreed that the implications of recent developments in AI are so enormous that discussions such as those inspired at the CityU TED event are essential.

Dr Kathleen Landy, Associate Director in the Center for Teaching Innovation at Cornell University, CityU’s long-term collaborator on our veterinary medicine project, says conversations like the ones at the CityU TED event “will continue to prove to be invaluable as we make sense of the emerging and seismic impact that these tools will have on teaching and learning”.

The key takeaway was that the dialogue must continue if we are to learn and experience more about what AI has to offer, what the pitfalls might be, and how universities should evolve side-by-side with these powerful new AI technologies.