Warning about AI in South African schools

[Nat Quinn]

Education experts have called on the government to urgently develop policies to govern the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools, Netwerk24 reports.

Independent education consultant Marius Botha told the Afrikaans news publication that AI use had become so prevalent among teachers and learners in schools that it had become a part of some institutions’ marketing.

Botha said that the biggest challenge AI caused in education was in assessing pupils’ performance in assignments done outside the classroom, some of which can easily be generated by generative AI chatbots.

While some tools can detect signs of generative AI usage, they are not foolproof and may sometimes fail to detect such usage or falsely flag human-made content as AI-generated.

The large language models on which these tools are based are also continuously improved to better mimick human writing and speech.

Federation of School Governing Bodies’ (Fedsas’) technology centre manager Riaan van der Bergh agreed with Botha regarding the performance assessment issue.

He said that educators would need to devise creative ways to assess assignments. For example, while students could be allowed to use AI chatbots they may be required to mark the responses.

Many chatbots include sources for their information, which the students could interrogate to determine whether the AI has conveyed accurate details.

They may also need to research words or concepts in the responses that they do not understand.

In addition, written assignments may need to make way for more oral presentations or analyses.

Botha said these approaches would force learners to still think critically and make AI-generated responses their own.

However, ensuring these changes are effective and sensible will require intervening policy and regulations.

Botha called on schools to prioritise the creation of official AI policies, while Van der Bergh bemoaned the government’s slow progress in doing the same.

He explained the department’s view was that schools’ policies needed to be aligned with a national policy.

Basic education department spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga told Netwerk24 that a policy on AI was still far off.

He said that the government would first need to hold formal discussions to decide whether a policy was necessary or if guidelines would be sufficient.

Mhlanga said the topic was getting the necessary attention and would be discussed at the government’s next lekgotla.

Useful AI-powered education tools already available

In addition to being capable of generating text in response to user prompts and questions, AI help make complex topics easier and quicker to understand.

This could significantly benefit learners who need tutoring or additional analysis to understand a particular topic or how to apply theory for content analysis or mathematical calculations.

There are already some AI tools that are useful in this regard.

One example of this is Google’s NotebookLM, which can analyse YouTube videos, audio recordings, websites, or text documents and provide a summary of their content.

Users who want to write an essay on a particular topic can ask NotebookLM to look only for the relevant content to save time on research.

It can also be used to present the analysed content in a conversational podcast, a format that many pupils may be familiar with and find easier to consume than reading textbooks.

The podcast could also have speakers with opposing viewpoints on contentious topics, encouraging critical thinking.

ChatGPT creator OpenAI has also been developing partnerships with academia to expand its revenue channels to the educational sector.

The company released a specialised chatbot for teaching called ChatGPT Edu in May 2024, with custom controls and special pricing for educational institutions.

OpenAI also hired former Coursera executive Leah Belskey as its first general manager of education in September 2024.

 

SOURCE:Warning about AI in South African schools – MyBroadband

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