LYE Che Yee and HO Yan Yin
SUSS Teaching & Learning Centre,
Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS)

Che Yee and Yan Yin talk about the initiatives being developed at SUSS to support students and teaching faculty to optimally apply generative AI in teaching and learning.

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 generative AI in teaching and learning.

Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash

Lye, C. Y., & Ho, Y. Y. (2024, January 24). Teaching and learning in the age of generative AI. Teaching Connections.  https://blog.nus.edu.sg/teachingconnections/2024/01/24/teaching-and-learning-in-the-age-of-generative-artificial-intelligence-genai/

 

In early 2023, the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) established a statement on the use of generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI, or GenAI) tools in assessment for both students and teaching faculty. Increasingly prevalent, the use of GenAI would be an integral practice in our lives. We believe the role of a higher education institution is to educate and teach students to use GenAI tools responsibly. Similarly, the institution also has the responsibility to ensure that its teaching faculty are equally confident in applying GenAI in teaching and learning, whether it is supervising students’ use of GenAI or incorporating the use of GenAI in their teaching practice.

 

Supporting Students To Use GenAI

To help students harness the potential of GenAI for their learning, a new learning support workshop entitled “Generative AI in Tertiary Education Learning: Effective Prompt Writing” was developed and conducted. A heuristic—“VERIFIED”—was used to anchor the workshop where students were taught to:

This verified framework was developed by Dr Evelyn Gay Hui Ting to anchor the “Generative AI in Tertiary Education Learning: Effective Prompt Writing” workshop at SUSS.

 

Through the workshop, students learned to confidently explore the capabilities of GenAI tools such as ChatGPT to generate ideas for writing, summarising content, and for project planning. Students also explored the potential of using GenAI tools as a learning companion that acts like their virtual personal tutor. Through these explorations and guided usage of GenAI tools, students appreciated the affordances and limitations of using GenAI for learning, and that it was critical to be mindful of ethical considerations regarding the use of these tools.

 

Supporting Teaching Faculty To Use GenAI

We have also carried out a series of activities to support our teaching faculty for a new teaching paradigm that incorporates the use of GenAI. First, a teaching support workshop entitled “Generative AI in Tertiary Education Teaching: Effective Prompt Writing” was developed and conducted. This workshop was intended to mirror the workshop developed for students but with the focus on exploring the capabilities of GenAI tools such as ChatGPT to design lessons, instructional activities, and assessments (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. E-direct mailer (eDM) for the teaching support workshop “Generative AI in Tertiary Education Teaching: Effective Prompt Writing”.

The proliferation and increasing sophistication of GenAI tools meant that there was a need to continuously keep our students and teaching faculty abreast with new developments. Hence, we will continue to offer and keep these workshops current so that SUSS students and teaching faculty had access to resources that would help them use GenAI tools well.

 

Sustaining Conversations on GenAI at SUSS

To encourage dialogue amongst our teaching faculty about GenAI, a conversation series was organised to discuss issues related to the use of ChatGPT in assessment by students and by instructors (see Figure 2). We were fortunate to have Dr Rachel Forsyth from Lund University, Sweden to anchor this conversation.

Figure 2. eDM for Teaching & Learning Conversation entitled “Assessment and ChatGPT” for SUSS teaching faculty.

 

Meanwhile, the School of Business (SBIZ), in collaboration with the Teaching & Learning Centre (TLC) at SUSS, also organised an “Assessment Design in a Generative AI World” competition for SBIZ faculty. Interested teaching faculty submitted an assessment task that not only met the requirements of quality assessment (i.e., validity, reliability, fairness and practicality), but would also be an effective assessment task in a world where students could readily access GenAI tools. Four high-quality assessment tasks were identified from the competition. Colleagues from SBIZ and TLC also collaborated to develop GenAI literacy amongst the teaching faculty at SUSS through a professional sharing entitled “Harnessing GenAI for Performance and Productivity in Content Development” (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. eDM for “Harnessing GenAI for Performance and Productivity in Content Development”, a professional sharing co-facilitated by SBIZ and TLC.

 

Future Plans

Currently, plans are underway to reach out to SUSS teaching faculty to share innovative simultaneous use of multiple GenAI tools for teaching. These would then form a set of cases/exemplars for reference which would help elevate overall GenAI literacy amongst the teaching faculty. At a higher level, a taskforce co-chaired by the Provost and Vice-President (Learning Services) has been established, to continue exploring the impact of GenAI on teaching and learning, particularly on adult learners. Through these multi-pronged approaches (from policy to practice, for both students and for teaching faculty), we hope to harness the affordances of GenAI to make teaching and learning at SUSS effective and efficient.

 

LYE Che Yee is currently a Senior Lecturer at Teaching & Learning Centre at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), where she teaches assessment-related postgraduate courses. She also develops and conducts assessment and adaptive learning professional development courses for faculty and associate faculty. Her research and publications focus on educational measurement, assessment and evaluation; psychometrics; adaptive testing and learning. Che Yee can be reached at cylye@suss.edu.sg.

HO Yan Yin is a Senior Lecturer at the Teaching and Learning Centre at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), where she is the programme lead for academic coaching learning support for students. She also teaches postgraduate courses on adult learning. Her research and publications focus on bite-sized learning, adult learning and learning to learn competency. Yan Yin can be reached at yyho@suss.edu.sg.