What is it about?
This article examines how ChatGPT can act as a virtual colleague in designing materials for higher education design students. Two university educators used a self-study approach to collaborate with ChatGPT in creating course materials and then reflected on its strengths and weaknesses. They placed ChatGPT in the context of recent digital disruptions affecting design practices and assessed its potential threats and opportunities for developing design-focused educational content. The educators found that ChatGPT was helpful in saving time, organising textual content, and brainstorming ideas. However, they also noted that the content it generated was often generic and required significant human intervention to achieve desirable outcomes. ChatGPT needed a lot of prompting, encouragement, and manual editing to produce high-quality results. Overall, ChatGPT proved to be a competent language model with useful functionalities for creating course materials and outlines for higher education design courses. However, it also had limitations. The authors’ reflections provide insights for design educators considering using ChatGPT in their work. They caution that while ChatGPT has potential benefits, educators need to weigh these against its drawbacks and ethical challenges to determine if it is a suitable tool for their needs.
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Why is it important?
This research is important because it explores the practical use of AI tools, like ChatGPT, in educational settings, for designing course materials for higher education design students. As digital tools increasingly impact educational practices, understanding their strengths and limitations may help educators make informed decisions about integrating technology into their teaching. By highlighting ChatGPT’s capabilities and challenges, this study may provide insights for educators considering AI as a tool to enhance efficiency and creativity in curriculum development. It also raises important ethical considerations, encouraging a balanced evaluation of AI's role in education.
Perspectives
This research delved into how AI might assist in designing course materials. By sharing our hands-on experiences, we looked at the benefits and challenges of working with ChatGPT.
Dr Yaron Meron
University of Sydney
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Artificial intelligence in design education: evaluating ChatGPT as a virtual colleague for post-graduate course development, Design Science, January 2023, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/dsj.2023.28.
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