Karin AVNIT
SIT Teaching and Learning Academy (STLA),
Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT)

Karin shares her team’s experiences of supporting their colleagues in engaging with GenAI, including strategies to enhance professional development and reviewing current assessment practices at SIT.

This post is featured in a Special issue on “Navigating Generative AI in Higher Education”, where academic developers in Singapore’s institutions of higher learning discuss how they are working with their student and faculty colleagues to effectively engage with and navigate GenAI in teaching and learning.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash.

Avnit, K. (2024, January 25). Generative AI at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT). Teaching Connections.  https://blog.nus.edu.sg/teachingconnections/2024/01/24/generative-ai-at-the-singapore-institute-of-technology-sit/

 

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI, or GenAI) tools like ChatGPT has opened new frontiers in teaching and learning. At the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), we identify three focus areas for a responsible adoption of GenAI tools. First, the urgent need to adapt our assessment practices to ensure the validity of our assessment while maintaining standards of academic integrity. Second, the exciting opportunities that GenAI tools provide for improved teaching and learning practices, and third is the need to review how GenAI tools affect the industries for which we prepare our graduates, to update the programme learning outcomes, and to ensure that our students have the right skills as well as knowledge to integrate effectively in the workforce. We share here our experiences and strategies, journeying with academic staff at SIT through this fast-changing landscape for professional development and the review of assessment practices.

 

A Collaborative Approach to Professional Development

Managing the disruption that GenAI tools introduced starts with ensuring that academic staff are aware of this technology, able to use it effectively, and appreciate its capabilities. This need to quickly upskill all academic staff at SIT is unprecedented in terms of professional development practices. With the absence of established best practices, no experts that have more than limited experience with the technology in higher education, and with a technology that evolves rapidly, upskilling staff at SIT was a challenge.

SIT took a collaborative approach to this challenge of professional development, turning to the growing collective experience within SIT and drawing insights from the global education community. A channel for discussions on AI in teaching and learning was set up on Microsoft Teams, as a place for sharing information and collaborative learning. In this channel, the team of educational technologists and educational developers from the SIT Teaching and Learning Academy (STLA) published an academic guide for practices related to GenAI. Recognising that any guide on GenAI must be constantly updated, the guide (available only internally) is concurrently published as a shared editable document that enables all teaching and academic staff to contribute from their knowledge and experience. Sharing and dialogue sessions are also scheduled regularly and are well attended.

 

Guarding the Validity of Assessments

When it comes to the validity of assessments, SIT is perhaps at greater risk than more traditional higher education institutions of GenAI impacting the validity of our assessments. This is due to the progressive assessment practices that we promote and the limited reliance on proctored exams. Authentic and Applied Assessment practices mean that much of the work is done in project or project-like tasks, where instructors have limited oversight or control over the tools used by students in the completion of tasks. For this reason, SIT immediately put an emphasis on reviewing all current assessments to gauge and address any threat to the validity of our assessment practices, and to ensure that we are still able to assess the competencies of students in achieving the stated learning outcomes.

At the same time, we did not change our assessment principles and policies. We still promote authentic assessment practices, rather than react to the potential threat by returning to proctored pen-and-paper exams. In the long run, as GenAI tools also change industry practices, we anticipate that the Programme Learning Outcomes will need to update and reflect the new skills of the industry for employees to co-work with AI. Then, GenAI tools may be seamlessly integrated into practices of authentic assessment.

As part of the effort to ensure the validity of assessments, all academic staff at SIT are required to demonstrate their competency in evaluating and adjusting assessments to meet the new challenges presented by GenAI tools, as part of a mandatory Micro-Module on AI literacy. As academic staff review and revise their assessment briefs for this demonstration of competency, this naturally feeds back to the collaborative learning to co-exist with GenAI.

 

Concluding Remarks, as Generated by ChatGPT

SIT’s journey with Generative AI in education highlights a path of innovative adaptation and collaborative growth. Emphasising the integrity of assessments, enhancing teaching methods, and aligning with evolving industry standards, we are pioneering a balanced integration of GenAI in higher education. Our experience showcases the potential of AI to enrich learning while maintaining academic excellence, setting an example for the future of educational practices.

 

Karin AVNIT is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director (EdTech) at the SIT Teaching and Learning Academy (STLA) at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT). Karin works with Educational Technologists to support and develop educators in the adoption of technologies for teaching and learning and advises on policies and practices related to the use of generative artificial intelligence in SIT. Karin can be reached at karin.avnit@singaporetech.edu.sg.