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Dr Peet van Aardt
Dr Peet van Aardt is the head of the UFS Writing Centre and the Coordinator of the Initiative for Creative African Narratives (iCAN).

Opinion article by Dr Peet van Aardt, Centre for Teaching and Learning and Head of the UFS Writing Centre, University of the Free State. 


The use and permittance of artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT at the University of the Free State (UFS) should be discouraged, writes Dr Peet van Aardt.

A decade ago, academics were encouraged to find ways to incorporate social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter in their teaching. Seeing as students were spending so much time on these platforms, the idea was that we need to take the classroom to them. Until they found out young people do not use social media to study, but rather to create and share entertainment content.

During the late 2000s, News24.com, the biggest news website in Africa, went on a mission to nurture and expand what was known as “community journalism” because everybody started owning smartphones, the news outlet’s leadership thought it was the opportunity to provide a platform for people to share photos, videos and stories of news events that took place around them. Until they realised that the vast majority of people didn’t want to contribute to journalism; they merely wanted to consume it.

Lest we assume students will use AI in a responsible and productive manner, at the UFS Writing Centre we find that students over-rely on ChatGPT in their assignments and essays. We should do everything in our power to discourage its use because it threatens what we do at a university on three levels.

It’s an educational issue

There are five main academic literacies we want to teach our students: reading, writing, speaking, listening and critical thinking. When students prompt ChatGPT to write their essay for them, immediately the reading and writing literacies are discarded because the student does not write the essay, nor do they read any source material that would help them form an argument. Critical thinking goes out the window, because it is merely a copy-and-paste job they are performing. And speaking? We see in the Writing Centre that students who use ChatGPT cannot discuss their “work”. The student voice is being killed.

There are lecturers who take the approach of motivating students to use prompted content from ChatGPT in order to critique and discuss the AI output. This is fine, should the students be operating at a level where their academic literacies have been established. In short: for postgraduate use it might be acceptable. Undergraduate students need to go through the process of becoming scholars and master their subject matter before they can be expected to critique it. It is basic pedagogy, and our duty as staff at the UFS, because it aligns with the Graduate Attribute of Critical Thinking.

It’s a moral issue

In addition to the academic literacies we attempt to instil in our students are attributes of ethical reasoning and written communication. The fact that AI tools “scrape” the internet for content without any consent from the content creators means that it is committing plagiarism. It is theft – “the greatest heist in history” as some refer to it. Do we want our students to develop digital skills and competencies on immoral grounds? Because often this is the reason given when students are encouraged or allowed to use AI: “The technology is there, and therefore we must learn to go with the flow and let the students to use it.” By this reasoning one can make the argument that the UFS rugby team (go, Shimlas!) must use performance-enhancing substances because it will make the players faster, stronger and “the technology is there”.

Academics also face a moral dilemma as there seems to brew a view that fire should be fought with fire: that AI can assist and even lead in tasks such as plagiarism detection, assessment and content development. But fighting fire with fire just burns down the house. Let us not look to AI to lessen our workload.

It’s an economic issue

Technology in education should be used to level the playing field. Companies develop online tools with a primary goal of making money – despite what the bandwagon passengers in the East and West promise us. Their operations cost a lot of money, and so they release free versions to get people hooked on it, and then they develop better products and place them behind a paywall. What this then means is that students who can afford subscription costs get access to the premium product, while the poor students get left behind. How can we assess two students who cannot make use of the same version of a tool? This will widen the gap in performance between students from different economic backgrounds. And consider the deletion of the authentic student voice (as alluded to earlier), these AI tools just represent a new platform for colonisation and therefore have no place in our institution.

OK, so what?

Lecturers who want advice on how to detect overreliance on AI tools can have a look at this video, which forms part of the AI Wayfinder Series – a brilliant project by the UFS’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Digital Futures and the Digital Scholarship Centre. These centres also have other helpful resources to check out.

But as an institution we need to produce a policy on how to deal with the threat and possibilities of AI. (Because in society and in certain disciplines it can make a contribution – just not for undergraduate studies in a university context.) Currently, a team that includes staff from the Faculty of Law and that of Economic and Management Sciences is busy drafting guidelines which departments can implement. Then, after a while, a review of these guidelines-in-practice can be done to lead us on the path of establishing a concrete policy.

If we as educators consider the facts that the use of AI tools impede the development of academic literacies (on undergraduate level), it silences local, authentic voices and it can create further economic division among our student community, we should not promote its use at our institution. Technology is not innovative if it does not improve something.

Dr Peet van Aardt is the Head of the UFS Writing Centre and the Coordinator of the Initiative for Creative African Narratives (iCAN). Before joining the UFS in 2014 he was the Community Editor of News24.com. 

News Archive

UFS to celebrate Darwin Year
2008-11-10

The University of the Free State (UFS) will next year be celebrating Darwin Year with a comprehensive programme in which many of its departments will take part. The programme is spearheaded by the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, in cooperation with the National Museum.

“Next year it will be 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin and 150 years after the publication of the first edition of his famous book ‘On the Origin of Species’”, says Prof. Jo van As, chairperson of the organising committee and head of the Department of Zoology and Entomology at the UFS.

“The programme aims to portray the influence of Darwin’s theory of evolution on various fields in the natural and agricultural sciences. It will start in February 2009 and end a year later in February 2010. We see this as a good opportunity to promote science in its broadest context,” says Prof. Van As.

According to Prof. Van As a scientific lecture programme on evolution and its impact on various fields will be presented on the Main Campus of the UFS in Bloemfontein on a monthly basis throughout next year. These will include topics such as the mechanisms of evolution: heredity and natural selection, extinction, the start of agriculture, human demography, human impact and the resistance to HIV/Aids antibiotics. The theme of the lecture programme is “The Story of Life”.

A stage play to commemorate the life of Darwin and celebrate his contribution to the understanding of life will also be performed during the Volksblad-kunstefees.

The National Museum will host different events and exhibits. “They will participate in the programme presented at the UFS, present temporary exhibitions to coincide with the programme on campus and also present their own events,” says Prof. Van As.

More information about the programme can be obtained from Ms Isabel Human at 051 401 2427 or humanci.rd@ufs.ac.za.


Media Release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@ufs.ac.za  
10 November 2008
 

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