Disruptive Technologies–Artificial Intelligence Coming to Higher Ed
Usually, when IT is doing its typical creating and innovating for UMass Boston, what’s being worked on isn’t something that’s received national media attention or is well known among the general population. However, what we’re calling Disruptive Technologies is entirely different, as we’ll let Associate Chief Information Officer Apurva Mehta explain.
“When we came back in early January 2023 for the Spring semester what was hitting the market at that time was something called ChatGPT. You may have heard of that term,” he said somewhat facetiously. Of course, everyone has now heard of this Artificial Intelligence (AI) product that is not only turning higher education upside down, but also providing ominous hints at how AI could potentially transform our entire society. Apurva described it as the next stage of AI natural language processing. “So Microsoft has taken it to a whole new level with ChatGPT where you can tell it to write a paper for you,” Apurva said, with the words “write a paper” providing all that’s needed to consider the profound impact this technology is having on higher education.
The first people Apurva heard from at UMass Boston concerning ChatGPT was, not surprisingly, the faculty, who were suddenly dealing with the prospect that their students may be using the new technology to complete their class assignments. Recognizing the situation demanded immediate attention, Apurva quickly met with the Provost’s office and Learning Design Services Director Paula Thorsland to devise a strategy to address the issue.
The discussion first focused on how many universities have banned the use of ChatGPT by their students, but that option was rejected for several reasons, one of which is how difficult it would be to enforce. Apurva said that it isn’t easy for faculty to tell when a student has used ChatGPT on an assignment, especially if they’re not familiar with the student’s natural writing style. So instead, it was suggested to faculty that they include in their syllabi a request that students do not use ChatGPT in that class, but that innocuous sounding idea was only the first part of a multi-step plan Apurva, Paula, and their team devised to cope with ChatGPT.
The first thing the team did was hold frequent meetings, dubbed TEACH sessions, where faculty could consult with Learning Design Services support staff and learn various strategies to help neutralize ChatGPT or even turn it into a faculty-friendly tool. Faculty were first advised to allow Learning Design Services staff to review their assignments and show them how they could be slightly tweaked, for example by adding a critical thinking component, that makes using ChatGPT less effective. Faculty were also told about a plagiarism detection tool available to them called Turnitin, and that they can alert students in advance that their work may be reviewed by it.
But the most creative and ingenious strategy imparted to the faculty was to incorporate ChatGPT in their classes and use it to their advantage, or, as Apurva put it, instead of trying to mitigate ChatGPT, “Let’s embrace it.” For example, if coursework on a given day requires students to interpret a set of statistical data, have ChatGPT do the data analysis first and have the students analyze its findings. Then the new technology is being used to enhance education, not undermine it.
It’s not going to be easy, but if the rest of society can follow the example of UMass Boston, maybe artificial intelligence can truly benefit humanity in untold ways and not be as disruptive as it appears.