A study of news stories about the use of generative AI in higher education has found that a deeper look at the potential and impact of new platforms such as ChatGPT is required – and must include students.
Deakin University’s Professor Margaret Bearman and colleagues from India and Copenhagen studied 45 articles published in the months after ChatGPT’s arrival and found that while many journalists portrayed the arrival of new platforms as positive, the articles tended to miss key points.
Analysis of the articles published in international media outlets focused on HE found that the articles were shaped by a lens informed by existing issues.
“While being perceived as a disruption of the status quo, the authors generally frame AI as a catalyst for existing agendas, e.g. assessment reform, personalisation, or inclusion,” the authors state.
Negative stories tended to focus on the potential for students to use AI for nefarious purposes, without much evidence of students having a voice in media stories, the paper said; “the claims mainly portray students as either plagiarists or victims of a failing educational system.”
“Despite being a new technology, our conceptualization of ChatGPT is rooted in previous ways of thinking and talking about AI.”
The authors said that the warnings that articles carried about enabling cheating and challenging existing teaching and learning practices may have been helpful in tempering excessive optimism about the potential of ChatGPT, but also that is was essential, not just desirable, for students to be heard in conversations about the role and use of AI in HE.
