On Oct 25, CTLE held a professional development workshop GenAI in education. This event explored the opportunities and issues in teaching, learning and assessment. The invited speaker, Prof. Mike Sharples from the Open University in the United Kingdom, drew a crowd of over 40 UM academic staff from various faculties.

Prof. Mike Sharples introduced the capabilities of modern language models like ChatGPT-4, PaLM2, Claude-2, which can generate lengthy texts in any style across multiple languages. However, he pointed out that these systems could at times produce false responses. He saw new roles for AI, such as a ‘possibility engine’ to brainstorm ideas and a ‘Socratic opponent’ to help develop arguments. Other roles include ‘personal tutor’, ‘co-designer’ and ‘dynamic assessor’.

Talking about assessment, Prof. Sharples observed that as GenAI could make traditional exams obsolete, real-world practices like project-based learning should be given more weight. He proposed assignment designs focusing on process over product. He also emphasized the need for clear policies around GenAI use and acknowledging sources to build trust.

The speaker also spoke about key challenges posed by GenAI, including privacy, bias, ethics, and potential risk of mis-information and mis-understanding. He concluded the presentation by advocating a collaborative approach between education practitioners: we need to work together to promote personal and social learning in the fast-growing web of powerful AI tools. Finally, he demonstrated working with different prompts on GenAI tools and exchanged further insights with the audience. (Download slides) (Watch Keynote video)

A series of teaching blog posts  have been published on CTLE website regarding the integrating AI technologies in teaching, learning and assessment. CTLE is at your service in this rapidly evolving digital era of teaching and learning.