Davinia Hernández-Leo,
Professor of the Department of Information and Communications Technologies

For some time now, several factors, including technological progress, have driven the need to modernize higher education. However, it is the recent advent of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools that has, in record time, prompted so many university educators to centre so much attention on the need to rethink teaching and assessment.

We know our students already use the new AI tools. These tools can write essays, answer questions, and generate code, software and images, amongst many other tasks. Their use poses ethical challenges associated with biases and the reliability of their output, plagiarism and their impact on academic integrity, or environmental sustainability due to their large carbon footprint. At the same time, we have a responsibility to prepare young generations to develop the skills they will need in a world with a high degree of uncertainty, in a world with AI. 

Their use poses ethical challenges associated with biases and the reliability of their output, plagiarism and their impact on academic integrity, or environmental sustainability due to their large carbon footprint

Education must adapt to this reality in two ways. First, it must incorporate a new competency to develop in students, namely, the digital competency related to the critical use of AI. This competency must be worked on taking into account integrity and the ethical dimension. Second, it must incorporate new learning-task proposals. The good news is that these tools offer us new opportunities to improve learning processes. 

Our main task as teachers is to design the best possible conditions for our students to learn. Sometimes, this will require using AI technologies; other times, it will not. Sometimes, the expected learning outcomes will also have to do with knowing how to use these technologies. Training will be key for teaching staff and our schools to analyse the implications of this new reality for teaching. 

We will be able to apply our creativity as teachers in an informed way, devising learning-task proposals that take advantage of AI to work on high-level aspects of knowledge and skills. For example, in the case of ChatGPT, students will be able to compare their own texts with those resulting from interacting with AI and reflect on the differences. Or it can be used to enable self-assessment, with students using AI to correct and generate feedback on their answers to assignments, which they can then critically review. It can also be useful at different points in the writing process, for example, to brainstorm arguments and text structures. 

We will be able to co-exist in a world with AI in a positive way if it is designed and used with a critical spirit. That is why education is key. First, the ethical dimension must be integrated into the training of the engineers who will advance AI and in the regulation of technologies. Second, the different professions and general public must be made aware of the benefits and risks of AI, so that they can make their own decisions when using these technologies. In a 2022 report on AI and the rights of young people published by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, I explained that unequal training in digital competencies and AI leads not only to lesser preparedness to be competent in the professional world, but also greater vulnerability to the risks posed by AI. 

There is no doubt that the challenges and opportunities of automation and AI are coming to education. Relying (only) on ‘paper’ teaching and assessment methods will not address the challenges, as students, industry and society demand authentic learning and assessment. We cannot eschew informed educational innovation, which will help us design valuable teaching approaches focused on current and future students. The credibility of higher education is at stake.