This is a little left-field of health and wellbeing, but the topic of AI in education is a hot one, and appropriate use of it could enhance your study experience. Some thoughts and resources in post.
People who know me know that I come down on the positive side regarding recent developments in AI – particularly chatGPT.
I have been finding it a useful tool for writing, researching ideas, formulating lessons plans, creating lists and thinking about how to communicate concepts to different audiences.
I have only just scratched the surface of how useful the technology might be for my workflows.
Public debate rages on about the advantages and disadvantages of these tools and there is no doubt that learning institutions (and the lecturers within) need to think about how (if at all) these tools are used by students.
Thus, I was very pleased to see that Flinders has started to develop some guides for using AI in your studies.
Click the image to visit these guides.
The team at Student Learning Support Services (SLSS) also have a guide that is worth reading.
Whilst the initial question that you might ask is ‘can I use it?’, I ultimately think the more interesting questions will relate to how we use it. That will mean drawing on the strengths of these tools (e.g. understanding concepts, editing written text, identifying related concepts, helping develop essay plans and outlines) but knowing the limits of these tools (e.g. incomplete databases, difficulty attributing source, critical reflection).
Whilst in the short-term it might be attractive to have these kinds of tools do your work for you, you will need to keep in mind medium to longer-term education outcomes. You want to leave university with a rich knowledge base of your own and the capacity to independently produce work of a high quality. These tools should help you expand and accelerate your abilities, not act as a stand-in for those abilities.
For now, make sure to check on a per-topic basis whether you are permitted to use chatGPT and if you are, clarify how you are permitted to use it. Be sure to cite, reference, and
acknowledge use of literature and AI in your assessment, using the guidelines for that assessment. If in doubt, ask your topic coordinator.
If you’ve found a novel way to use AI to accelerate and enhance your learning, let me know in the comments below.