What does ChatGPT mean for higher professional education?

Pascal Wiggers: "Also consider the opportunities this technology offers for education."

17 Jan 2023 13:11 | Communication

A super-smart chatbot that generates complete texts to order: ChatGPT is the latest sensation in the field of artificial intelligence and is now also causing a stir in the world of education. This poses the question of what should universities of applied sciences do with ChatGPT.

Pascal Wiggers, Associate Professor of Responsible AI, is holding an information session on 24 January 2023 from the Centre of Expertise Applied AI in collaboration with the Digital Society School and FDMCI Dean Frank Kresin to discuss with lecturers the opportunities and dangers for education of ChatGPT. (This session will be held in Dutch.)

WHAT CONVERSATIONS ARE LECTURERS HAVING ABOUT CHATGPT?

"The first concern of lecturers is of course that this will be the end of written homework. An essay assignment can now be done by a student just using ChatGPT. Yet I also speak to many lecturers who actually find it quite interesting. As a lecturer, you can also have texts generated by the chatbot and then have students assess them. Or you can use it as a tool for students: ‘Take this text as the basis for this assignment'. Above all, there is a realisation that this development is going to change education in the same way that the calculator once did."

AND IS THIS INITIAL CONCERN OF LECTURERS JUSTIFIED?

"At first glance, the texts produced by ChatGPT look amazingly good. They seem to be very convincing, especially if they’re about a subject you don't know very well. Someone who is really well versed in a subject will often see that things are wrong after all, or that essential things are missing. What’s more, technologies are now being developed that can recognise texts from ChatGPT. You might wonder how lasting that will be, because if you know technically how to recognise it, you can also use that knowledge to improve ChatGPT's model again."

Photo caption: Professor of Responsible AI Pascal Wiggers

SHOULD THE AUAS START DRAWING UP RULES TO DEAL WITH CHATGPT?

"I don't think so. I think we have to learn how to deal with it. We are talking about a fundamental development here. This is just one chatbot, but there are only going to be more in the coming years. You have to adapt to that and this will possibly also differ from one degree programme to another. The Communication degree programme faces different issues to, say, the Nursing degree programme."

"There are different ways to deal with this. You can make using ChatGPT more difficult, for example. ChatGPT mainly uses knowledge from mostly English-speaking cultural areas and is now about two years old, so if you start asking questions about current affairs, it often doesn't know the answers yet. And the model mainly has information about commonly known facts. So if you are more creative in the questions you ask, it also becomes harder for such a system to come up with a meaningful answer.”

"In addition, I think we need to look even more at the process and not just at an end product like an essay. What preliminary research has a student done, for example, to arrive at a particular story or answer? And I think we are going to use feedback sessions, when you can ask for understanding rather than a representation of knowledge. You can ask a student to explain the reasoning behind a particular answer and which sources they used. This would fit in with the direction we are moving in in education anyway."

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE LECTURERS?

"Also consider the opportunities this technology offers for education. You can imagine asking students to analyse a text written by ChatGPT or to use ChatGPT to make a first rough version of a text, and then to improve it themselves. This involves skills such as asking the right questions, critical reading, checking assertions and sources, and understanding what tools like ChatGPT can do and how to write using such tools. These may be pretty useful skills in a time when disinformation is a growing problem."

Pascal Wiggers believes the knowledge session on 24 January (in Dutch) will be the start of a discussion on the use of ChatGPT in higher education. "The plan is to keep discussing and developing ideas with a group of interested people. We will definitely involve students in that."

A WORD FROM FRANK KRESIN, DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF DIGITAL MEDIA & CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

"ChatGPT and related technologies represent a breakthrough in the field of AI that will cause major changes in all kinds of sectors. Education is one of them. If deployed correctly and surrounded by safeguards, these tools can help us deliver better quality education and test understanding more deeply. In doing so, students will gain skills that are highly sought after and that will help them hold their own in the labour market.”

“Our challenge is to use the capabilities of these new technologies in such a way that another important skill, the ability to produce convincing texts independently, will also benefit. We will use the coming period to develop the learning, work and assessment formats that will make this possible. We will engage with all stakeholders on this and the session on 24 January is part of that."