By Shakeel Jhazbhay, General Manager, Digital Business Solutions at Datacentrix, a HEITSA Premier Corporate Partner
In the ever-evolving realm of educational technology, Generative AI (GenAI) is emerging as a transformative force poised to reshape the education sector.
However, to gain a comprehensive grasp of GenAI’s suitable applications and potential impact within education, it’s important to look back in history at the use of technology in previous times to support students and educators.
Consider the use of scientific calculators for class work, for instance. In the 1970s, the belief was that sums must be done using pen and paper or we’d risk reducing people’s ability to make their own calculations. Fast forward to today, and we all have calculators at our fingertips on our smart phones.
By the same token, we know that students are already using apps like ChatGPT to help with assignments or to summarise information. However, GenAI is not perfect in its accuracy and the output it produces, and herein lies risk. The fundamental basis of ChatGPT is that it has essentially consumed the internet, but this does not mean that the output is factual or accurate.
In some ways, GenAI can hamper the fact-gathering process, as it presents its results as reality, regardless of whether they are correct or not. This is called ‘hallucination’.
Today’s discussion around GenAI should focus on the fact that the latest technology can and must be used to support students and help them to save time, but it must be used in the correct way with appropriate safeguards.
It’s vital that education continues to foster critical thinking in its students. Consequently, human input, through gathering and assessing data from a variety of different sources and opinions for accuracy and bias, remains an essential step.
Where AI can be extremely powerful and opens doors for different communities is around the translation of materials into different languages, or by using analytics to really understand a student’s learning style and performance.
Assessments could also become more adaptive to gauge understanding at a granular level, meaning that they could be paced depending on the number of correct answers provided by the student. Furthermore, there’s the question of using AI to grade papers in future, helping to streamline this time-consuming marking process.
It’s safe to say that while ChatGPT has helped to bring this type of technology into public consciousness, AI is much broader than just GenAI, and there are so many areas within this new technology that it can have a potentially helpful impact on education.
Strict governance and controls are required to avoid unintentional consequences, which will require the industry to come together and effectively plan as to how to address these present and future risks, whilst reaping the benefits for learners and educators alike.
Datacentrix is a leading hybrid ICT systems integrator and managed services provider. For more information, please contact Francois Jacobs on 083 602 5857, or via email on [email protected].