Are you interested in an area of research but perhaps struggling to find the time to develop your idea? Did you know that we have a Faculty research group where you can join like-minded colleagues with similar research interests?
Four research sub-categories have been set up:
Digital – this includes digital capabilities, use of software, use of AI within a teaching setting
Fit for Future – this includes skills development, professionalism, employability, transitions
Teaching and Learning – this includes assessment and feedback, evaluation of teaching methods, innovative teaching methods
Widening Participation – this includes inclusivity, accessibility to teaching and opportunities, student experience
As we develop our understanding of AI and its capabilities, we are looking at how advancing technologies such as ChatGPT might assist colleagues and students with day to day tasks. FMS TEL team members Simon Cotterill, Gemma Mitchelson and Michael Hughes succeeded in securing ERDP funding to explore such possibilities.
Project aims:
To enable staff and students to access contextualised and personal data via AI machine learning software
To investigate a process for generating AI responses in a more ethical way
To improve the University’s understanding of AI machine learning in an HE context.
We are investigating use of contextualised data, formatted with natural language, optimized for A.I. For example, using a student’s programme and module information, their timetable data, and MOF information to assist the student in accessing key information more easily. Later this could be enhanced with richer information, such as programme/module study guides, VLE course information and other sources. via APIs. Likewise, a chatbot for staff could draw together University, Faculty and School-specific information.
An exciting new feature to be explored is that of agents (aka ‘Assistants’) and their ability to take on different functions and different personas; effectively acting as a small workforce to support, user needs. Up to now, most of us are familiar with having a conversation with a single agent, yet there is growing scope for multi-agent use. In the visual below you can see an Ai Agents overview from Chat Dev. By setting instructions and ’embedding’ information into the system users can encourage each agent to behave differently. For example, “You are a member of the Design team who will come up with simple ways to achieve a set goal”, “You are a CEO who will talk to the CTO on what steps should be taken to achieve X,Y and Z.”…
The technologies are evolving very rapidly. At an “AI Sprint” in late November, the FMS TEL team were able to work with newly released features from OpenAI; these make the embedding of customised information and personalising Assistants (agents) much more accessible. These and other new features support the integration of AI features within other systems. As such, there is likely to be a proliferation of new AI products and plugins based on these features – and hopefully eventually within the systems supported by FMS TEL. All work in our project will be cross-referenced to our university principles on AI which can be accessed here: Artificial Intelligence (AI) | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk)
There are challenges to consider; in particular those related to Data Protection, which we continue to review. There are also financial considerations when using external AI services like OpenAI or via Azure API, which are metered (pay according to use), rather than fixed price plans, which need investigating as part of our intended trial/pilot.
We are in the early stages of fact-finding but will be reaching out to FMS schools in the new year with an invite to workshops to share our proof of concept.
Gamma.app is an A.I-based tool which generates presentations, documents, and webpages. It’s focus on presentations makes it of potential interest to those involved in teaching and learning. https://gamma.app
Quick Look:
In ‘guided mode’, I gave a title ‘history of Newcastle upon Tyne’, and Gamma provided a choice of templates and then generated a suggested presentation structure within a few seconds. It then generated a deck of 8 slides in about 1 minute. The slide deck included relevant images and could be exported as Powerpoint or PDF. Additionally, Gamma allows for the import of custom text, which it adapts and converts into a slide deck or document. The ‘AI editor’ provides options, such as “Suggest a professional theme”, “Give more detail”, “Give me a more exciting way to say this” etc.
Cost:
Gamma currently (October 2023) has a three tier model:
Free limited use – you get a one-off 400 ‘AI Credits’ (credits used each time you generate a document), exported slides and documents are branded
‘Plus’ – £78/year, 400 ‘AI Credits’ per month
‘Pro’ – £147/year, unlimted credits and extra features
Thoughts:
Gamma is a powerful tool which can quickly generate slide decks and documents which are ‘usable’ with little modification. With all the focus on the tools of the ‘big players’, such as Microsoft/Chat-GPT and Google, it is refreshing to see a tool from a seemingly independent company (though, like many other A.I. apps, it may well be using the back-end services of Chat-GPT ).
Of course, to use A.I. generated materials, it is important to have grounded subject knowledge and critically review and adapt outputs, to avoid mistakes. It is also important to carefully word the prompts which you provide to the A.I.; for example, a presentation generated for me by Gamma, about “Newcastle University”, included accurate information about the 19th century pre-cursors of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, but then mentioned a merger with UCL in 2002, and included a photo of Newcastle University in Australia.
There are obvious plagiarism and academic integrity issues to consider. In common with most other A.I. apps, there is no acknowledgement of the source materials used in training of the A.I. As such it may be part-based on copyrighted materials and licenced content such as Wikipedia, which has an Attribution-Share-Alike licence. Likewise, the source of images aren’t acknowledged – though the ‘A.I. Editor’ does give the option of ‘all images’ (even if licencing unknown), ‘Free to use’ (which seem ‘loose’, by including sources which don’t generally display image licence information, such as Facebook and Twitter) and ‘Free to use commercially’ – and you can click through to the source of the image. The pricing model for Gamma is similar to that of other A.I. tools, all of which lead the universal problem of inequality of access, giving advantage to students from more well-off backgrounds. But these tools are widely available now, and this is the new reality that H.E. needs to adapt to.
The Learning and Teaching Conference in March gave Gemma and I the chance to present a video about our current ERDP research project.
Our research focuses on engagement with online learning materials within the Faculty of Medical Sciences and NUMed. The full video can be viewed on the conference playlist.
