The scene of education has faced many crises from within and from outside. But the coming of artificial intelligence, particularly with Chat GPT-4, a tool developed by Open AI, the scene of education is finding itself like a cat among the pigeons. It is a breakthrough that is breaking down all that we held as sacred in education. But in this challenge, we may smell an opportunity. The boundaries that this new technology is crossing can enable us to convert our scene of education into a practice of freedom. Indeed, the coming of Chat GPT-4 is a game changer in artificial intelligence and it has a potential to change the way we educate and learn. Chat GPT-4 is a natural language processing (NLP) model that has the ability to understand and produce human like language. It uses natural language input to produce text with the help of machine learning. Chat GPT-4 produces text that is not just similar but also smarter than human beings. Thus, it has the potential to truly revolutionize the way we teach, learn and communicate besides a lot of its other applications will benefit other spheres of life.
The major strength of Chat GPT-4 is its ability to produce text that is personal and tailored to user needs. Thus, in the field of education, it can generate personalized conversations with students to understand concepts effectively. It will, therefore, be a teaching assistant that can provide source materials, generate assignments and provide feedback on assignments of the students. The speed as well as accuracy at which it generates its modes of assistance is indeed amazing. Thus, students can receive real-time assistance with their understanding of concepts as well as receive feedback as they compose their assignments and act in accordance. It can also assist teachers by generating their course materials enabling them to deliver exciting, engaging and interacting learning experiences to their students. Moreover, it can provide insight into the performance of the students that can help the teachers to monitor the progress of the students and offer customized assistance for improvements.
Chat GPT-4 will certainly change the way we teach and learn in the days to come. It has the potential to put the last nail on the classroom that replicates and model’s Plato’s cave which is primarily teacher and content centric. Our modes of teaching as well as evaluation will have to change to accommodate this unprecedent technology otherwise nothing can save us from this technology disrupting the present system of education. The students have the luxury in generating answers to any question in quick time. Hence, student totally depending on this technology may cheat at exams as well as during composition of assignments. This is why our evaluation that is chiefly content and memory oriented has to turn application oriented.
The present system mainly tried to check whether the students really understood the notion and concept. We knew that this mode of evaluation could be betrayed by rote memory. Hence, we try to check whether the student can compare notions with other notions and apply them to real life. But even this level of evaluation appears to be in danger with the arrival of Chat GPT-4. Besides, it may also disempower student’s applicative skills as he/ she may totally rely on technology alone. But, the best solution is not in shunning aside this technology, but it lies in our ability integrate it in our teaching learning practices. It may assist us to keep the student engaged and focused in their learning. This means we have the challenge to give up teacher-centric linear model of education and embrace a holistic model which embraces 360 degrees model of education. Although, it appears that Chat GPT-4 is going to replace our classroom as well as make the teacher redundant by encouraging online learning, it will not be able to replicate the intimate personalization that only a human teacher can provide.
The coming of the new technology in our classroom can blur the boundaries between classroom and online learning. It will provide personalized dialogical learning and would be preferred by parents and students. If it does not come in the classroom openly, it will operate in a hidden manner as it proves to be a great resource that provides instant solutions to the students queries as well as enable learning to conduct their learning at the pace set by the students. Hence, bringing it openly in the classroom will make learning experience conversational and dialogical. It cannot just provide ways of letting the students deal with complex notions that they find difficult, but will also allow them to get practice for their exams by generating personalized tests and quizzes in areas that the student may deem that he/ she needs more attention. Thus, the use of Chat GPT-4 under the active overseeing presence of the teacher in the classroom can indeed transform our classroom into a learning space that produces knowledge as well as consumes it. Thus, the student community alongside of their teachers will become genuinely a learning community. As GPT-4 continues to evolve it will benefit as well as pose new challenges to the scene of education. But to whether everything, we will have to change the mode of evaluation of our students.
We can no longer just depend on ‘the content and ability to reproduce it’ mode of evaluation, we will have to come to the application mode which evaluates the skills of the students. Thus, we have the challenge to take the next leap to transform our education into a practice of freedom. Letting to student learn through an assistant like Chat GPT-10 with the active accompanying guidance of the teacher will certainly be a practice of freedom. But let it become effective, we will have to get our teachers, management, parents and governments be open to this technology. Besides, the teachers as well as the students will have to be introduced and trained in the use of this exciting technology. A judicious use of this technology can only improve our learning outcomes and can enable us to actualize the goals that we set for ourselves through education. We cannot stop the revolution ushered by the new technology. Hence, it is wise to join the revolution and direct it to achieve the goals that we set through the entire process of education.
