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16 August 2024 Photo Supplied
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

Research helps farmers save with irrigation
2017-02-15

Description: Irrigation research Tags: Irrigation research

Marcill Venter, lecturer in the Department of
Agricultural Economics at the University of the
Free State, has developed the mathematical
programming system, Soil Water Irrigation
Planning and Energy Management in order to
determine irrigation pump hours.
Photo: Rulanzen Martin

Her advice to farmers is that they should make sure they are aware of the total cost (investment and operating costs) of an irrigation system. In most cases the investment cost is low, but the operating cost over the lifetime of the system is high.

“It is very important to have a look at the total cost and to install the most economic system,” says Marcill Venter, lecturer at the University of the Free State (UFS), who has done research on the economic sustainability of water-pipe systems.

Irrigation systems important components for farming
This research comes at a time when many farmers are relying on their irrigation systems due to persistent drought and low rainfall during 2016. South Africa has also experienced an abnormal increase in electricity tariffs in recent years. Due to tariff increases which threaten the future profitability of irrigation producers, the Water Research Commission (WRC) has launched and financed a project on the sustainable management of irrigation farming systems. “I had the opportunity to work on the project as a researcher,” says Venter.

The heart of every irrigation system is the water pipes that bring life to crops and livestock, and this is what Venter’s research is about. “Water pipes are part of the whole design of irrigation systems. The design of the system impact certain factors which determine the investment and operating costs,” she says.

Mathematical system to help farmers
Venter and Professor Bennie Grové, also from the Department of Agricultural Economics at the UFS, designed the Soil Water Irrigation Planning and Energy Management (SWIP-E) programming model as part of the WRC’s project, as well as for her master’s degree. “The model determines irrigation pump hours through a daily groundwater budget, while also taking into account the time-of-use electricity tariff structure and change in kilowatt requirements arising from the main-line design,” says Venter. The model is a non-linear programming model programmed in General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS).

Design of irrigation system important for sustainability

The main outcome of the study is that the time-of-use electricity tariff structure (Ruraflex) is always more profitable than the flat-rate structure (Landrate). The interaction between the management and design of a system is crucial, as it determines the investment and operating costs. Irrigation designers should take the investment and operating cost of a system into account during the design process. The standards set by the South African Irrigation Institute (SAII) should also be controlled and revised.

Water-pipe thickness plays major role in cost cuts
There is interaction between water-pipe thickness, investment and operating costs. When thinner water pipes are installed, it increases the friction in the system as well as the kilowatt usage. A high kilowatt increases the operating cost, but the use of thinner water pipes lowers the investment cost. Thicker water pipes therefore lower the friction and the kilowatt requirements, which leads to lower operating costs, but thicker pipes have a higher investment cost. “It is thus crucial to look at the total cost (operating and investment cost) when investing in a new system. Farmers should invest in the system with the lowest total cost,” says Venter.

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