Teachers need to embrace AI tools
Published:Monday | December 2, 2024 | 12:07 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
Recently I saw a social media post that broke my heart. “I’m no longer a teacher. I’m just a human plagiarism detector. I used to spend my grading time giving comments for improving writing skills. Now most of that time is just checking to see if a student wrote their own paper. What a waste of life.”
Sadly, this is a sentiment expressed in most educational institutions across the world. Educators have not caught on to what is going on in the real world. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not new. It has been around since the 1950s. This technology has evolved and continues to evolve rapidly, changing the way we operate in every area of our lives.
When OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, it changed the technological landscape considerably. Ordinary citizens then had the privilege to use artificial intelligence to do a wide variety of things including some of the things that students are required to do. For example, now students and their parents can ask ChatGPT, Microsoft CoPilot, Google Gemini, Meta AI or any other chatbot to write papers, and assist with assignments in any subject area. There is no need for me to list the capabilities of chatbots because they can tell you about their capabilities if you ask them.
The challenge for educators is to accept that things have changed and learn enough about AI to be able to guide students in the responsible and ethical use of AI. Educators are worried about students not being able to think critically because students ask chatbots to do assignments for them.
However, I am worried that educators are not able to think critically about AI because many are stuck in the old paradigm and are unwilling to learn about the capabilities of AI and critically assess its uses and implications for assessment in education and stop trying to get the new technology to fit the old paradigm. It cannot work.
WINNIE ANDERSON-BROWN