FINAL WORD
Can Generative AI transform higher education
Zoe Hurley at Zayed University says its College of Interdisciplinary Studies is taking a fresh approach to challenges of the AI age and lecturers are experimenting with exciting pedagogic opportunities , beyond banking models of learning .
AI is blatantly not the first new technology on-the-block and nor will it be last . Older learning tools and trinkets , like the abacas , calculators , biros , Tippex , whiteboard projectors and PowerPoint , have come and gone . Although some might have caused an initial stir , others were rapidly assimilated , becoming ubiquitous and taken for granted .
The Internet , ed-technology , massive open online courses , and the flippedclassroom are all cases in point . Similarly , although AI is currently being considered as a disruption to education , it will eventually seem as mundane as Excel .
But despite what we know about prior iterations of technology adoption , AI ’ s affordances to formulate text , essays , images , videos , intellectual and creative outputs based on a few simple prompts , are causing a surprising furore in higher education .
Universities are evidently troubled and confounded by AI ’ s seemingly audacious progression . Indeed , with the 2022 launch of ChatGPT , the natural language processing tool and the image-generating software Midjourney , generation of essays , code , images , other texts and creations has never been so easy .
Yet AI ’ s presence , albeit in algorithmic nudging , image tagging , social media profiles and friend recommendations , has been the writing-on-the-wall , so to speak , for the last decade at least . Having been caught off-guard by the new state-of-play , some
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