During a meeting in July of this year, we, the editing team of this blog, discussed the topic of generative AI in education. We all had completely different perspectives. Jane and Azumah were wary. Jonathon was interested, but I loved it because it made my professional life much easier (I recently read that other teachers felt the same (BBC News). So, we decided to each write a blog post to report our viewpoints and to start a conversation. So, six months after our original discussion, I would like to add to and respond to Jonathon and Jane’s blog questions: ‘What is all the fuss about?’ (Hughes, 2023) and ‘How far is AI plagiarism?’ (Cobb, 2023).
How far is AI plagiarism?
We cannot possibly know where generative AI models such as ChatCPT are getting their information from (Pride, 2023). However, as academics, we must acknowledge the information we obtain from any source. Most guidelines, including the OU, advise scholars to cite and reference the material they use from generative AI. Additionally, various AI plagiarism detectors, such as AI Content Detector, can help teachers detect the use of AI tools in assignments or tests, but they are often inefficient. On the other hand, plagiarism detectors are not always necessary because research has shown that students choose not to use AI tools in essay writing because they not only waste a lot of time producing good prompts, but they waste even more time reworking the essay, making the language neutral and believable (Alexander et al., 2023).
What is all the fuss about?
Although generative AI models afford considerable advantages to the world of education for English-speaking users, non-English users are underprovided. This fact could potentially widen the education gap. Therefore, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (Fengchun & Wayne, 2023) urges responsible and fair access to AI technology to limit educational divides within and among countries. Moreover, many communities lack the resources and infrastructure to access AI, resulting in increased AI data wealth over the past few years, primarily concentrated in the global north. This growing divide could significantly disadvantage data-poor communities, who ‘have been further excluded and put at long-term risk of being colonised by the standards embedded in the GPT models.’ (Fengchun & Wayne, 2023, p.14). Therefore, we must know how these powerful tools can benefit our professional practices. Additionally, guidance and training are needed regarding how AI uses our data and its effects on other social and cultural communities.
Using AI
My respect for AI developed from how much it relieved my workload. For example, I am an English teacher working in Italy, and I often use ChatCPT to correct my writing in Italian, which is not my mother tongue. Before I discovered this tool, I would have to ask a friend to check my writing, but ChatCPT does it in a split second and helps language learning. However, generative AI has no concept of social and cultural contexts, so the user needs to keep that in mind. Nevertheless, Kasneci et al. (2023) claim that generative AI can revolutionise language learning and teaching. Apps such as Memrise already offer one-to-one conversation lessons with ‘virtual’ teachers. However, there is still much work to be done.
Zhai (2022) points out that the language ability of AI far exceeds a human being’s proficiency in a foreign language. But AI models cannot yet think critically or be creative in the same way as humans. So, to take advantage of generative AI in the classroom, we need to improve our students’ critical thinking and creativity skills. Until now, the attraction for AI has been mainly superficial, but there is a growing awareness of some of the complexities involved.
In conclusion, generative AI tools might not be as damaging to our practices as initially thought, but they could be harmful on a much deeper level. We need to rethink our curricula as educators to favour creativity and raise awareness of how the data we feed into AI models is used. In light of these reflections, if you are a PG student, how aware are you of generative AI tools? Do you use any in your professional practice, and what advantages do they bring?
by Lesley Fearn
Dr Lesley June Fear
n is a secondary school English teacher in southern Italy. She is also an affiliate researcher at the Open University’s (UK) Faculty of Well-being, Education, and Language Studies (WELS), where her research centres on linguistics and sociocultural theory.