HELIG Coffee Talk: ChatGPT? Is it a friend or foe of university students, academics and librarians?

We live in a time where key technologies such as Artificial Intelligence has advanced so rapidly, offering AI-enabled chatbots such as ChatGPT launched in November 2022, as a “research prototype” that students have already been using to write their assignments as reported by Dawkins in the 22 January 2023 publication of Business Insider, US.  ChatGPT, in contrast to typing a query in Google’s search box that generates a list of results, provides users with answers that the bot has crawled through various information resources, extracting content it found relevant to the search query from books, articles and various sources. The challenge this presents in higher education institutions that to a large extent are still following a blended learning approach, including administering online assessments, need to consider what ChatGPT has to offer, and whether this is a friend or foe of students, academics and librarians. Is it a time for institutions of higher learning to implement an AI policy for teaching learning?

Join our virtual Coffee Talk on Friday, 17 February 2023 at 13:00, facilitated by Dr Lynn Kleinveldt, an academic at CPUT and HELIG Chair, and Ms Ingrid Thomson, a librarian at UCT and HELIG PRO, to have an informal discussion on where we should be heading with ChatGPT in teaching and learning support.