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Centre for Information Technology in Education at The University of Hong Kong
Trick or Treat with Advanced Educational Technologies?
Gary Wong
In recent years, many newly introduced technologies in education, such as Metaverse, artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality, blockchain, and data-informed learning. For example, one of the hottest topics that is discussed and criticized is the release of ChatGPT, a trained AI model which interacts with users in a conversational way. ChatGPT was recently developed by the OpenAI, an AI research and development company among other software engineers and researchers. The dialogue format allows ChatGPT to answer questions and probing questions to users.
In one instance, an instructor was teaching a course in a university, and asked a question to a group of students on a new concept that they had never heard about. A student immediately pulled his smartphone and started a conversation with ChatGPT and asked the model the same question as the instructor.
Almost instantly, ChatGPT replied with a detailed response and answered the question in a way the student would not have been able to answer without further research and learning. Of course, the instructor asked further questions to test the student’s understanding, and obviously the student needed more time than ChatGPT to respond accurately and precisely.
From the teacher’s perspective, this piece of AI technology is a trick to the learning because it seems to give students a way to cheat without paying much effort in thinking, exploring, debating, and reasoning through the process of learning. Students may be blinded by the responses and are willing to accept any idea without further checking and validation.
However, from the student’s perspective, this AI technology is a new treat to their learning because it allows them to search for an explainable idea to respond to their challenges. The technology becomes their agent of learning and provides them with a massive amount of information and a channel to new knowledge.
In particular, ChatGPT offers a human-centric dialogic approach for students to learn with and from, without challenging the trustworthiness and the original source of information. Similar to their search on the Internet, ChatGPT is more human like in its search response, instead of a simple search result which only points direction for students to further explore.
Isn’t it right, a human being is used to learn more effectively through dialogical conversation? Humans always learn through conversation with others, whether they are teachers, parents, and peer friends. When they have questions and search for answers, they simply ask, and they expect the response to be understandable. Giving them only direction will not be entirely helpful, because they need to take further effort to find the answers, same as asking Google search which only gives a series of websites for users to explore themselves and hopes the answer is in one of these sites.
The technology becomes their agent of learning and provides them with a massive amount of information and a channel to new knowledge
Hence, the development of AI as new educational technologies seem to bring students to knowledge closer. Whether the teachers will find their professional role as stable as before, or whether they need to adjust their pedagogical design taking the consideration of the existence of AI agent like ChatGPT, will continue to be a debate in education.
To resolve this unpredictable outcomes in education, educators and technologists need to collaborate and develop new technological solutions, which can benefit the students’ learning with the assistance of technologies and recognizing teachers as an authentic knowledge source. Also, students will need to develop their metacognitive competence toward the technologies and learn how to work with technologies rather than trust them without reasoning and examining their responses. Perhaps this same principle for human-computer interaction is applicable to human-human interaction as always, therefore, we should not forget the “trick or treat” that could happen every day.
