Andre Matthias MÜLLER and Alec MORTON
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (SSHSPH)
Andre and Alec share their experience of applying generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in their public health course, particularly in enhancing student learning and work. They also highlight the importance of understanding the capabilities and limitations of GenAI to foster its meaningful use among students.
Müller, A. M., & Morton, A. (2025, April 25). How do we approach the use of generative AI to enhance student work and learning? CTLT Teaching Connections. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/teachingconnections/2025/04/25/2025-muller-morton/
While generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has only recently become available to the public through AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, we have already travelled a significant distance in understanding how it will impact teaching and learning. What began with oversized expectations and concerns is now beginning to settle into a more measured understanding of what this technology can offer educators and students in higher education. In parallel, the university has moved from a cautious stance on GenAI to actively encouraging staff to make “meaningful use” of the technology in teaching in creative ways.
Given these developments, and the fact that students are increasingly using AI technologies in their academic work, now is the perfect time to reflect on what “meaningful use” of GenAI might mean. In this contribution, we will share our approach and how we support students in our courses to use GenAI intelligently. Although our reflections are grounded in the public health context, we hope that they may be of interest to a wider audience and stimulate discussions beyond our own discipline.
We believe that to get the most out of GenAI, our students must understand both what GenAI CAN and what it CANNOT do for them.
YES, GenAI CAN Do Some Things As Well As
—Or Better Than—Humans
The vast amount of data that commonly used GenAI tools have ingested gives them an edge in certain tasks. Indeed, GenAI can sometimes accomplish things better or more efficiently than we can. For example, it excels at creating visuals or graphs, offering varied explanations, and providing feedback on drafts. For clearly defined tasks, where the desired outcome is well understood, GenAI is a powerful tool.
Recognising this, we have encouraged students to leverage these capabilities to enhance their understanding and improve their work in straightforward ways. However, if we merely encourage students to use GenAI for tasks it can do better or faster than humans, we are simply encouraging them to participate in their own de-skilling. Instead, we need to think about how to use the technology to develop future-resilient competencies.
NO, GenAI CANNOT Make Good Decisions
To us, the role of educators goes far beyond teaching students to execute well-defined tasks. We need to support students in developing the ability to make sound judgments based on a wide range of information—much of which GenAI cannot access. An example of information which ChatGPT and the like cannot access is the wardrobes of NUS faculty—Figure 1 shows ChatGPT’s idea of a typical Singaporean academic’s wardrobe, whose jackets, long shirts and ties are more suited to Northern European winters than the tropics (it also reliably assumes that a typical NUS academic is male).
(Prompt: Produce an image of the wardrobe of an academic working at the National University of Singapore).
Good decision-making requires consideration of context, values, goals, and experiences, along with the ability to reflect on these various streams of information (Figure 2). GenAI is good at many things, but humans must incorporate many situationally specific factors into their judgment (Etemadi & Dede, 2021). This is especially critical in fields like public health, where we consider what theory or data indicate while also reflecting upon what we understand about local context, culture, politics and resources etc. In their professional careers, our students will have to do more than follow data, theory, or directives blindly; they need to be in the driver’s seat, making thoughtful and informed decisions.
Training Students in Intelligent Use of GenAI: In-class Workshop
One of us (Andre) has designed a 90-min GenAI workshop to train students on how to effectively use this technology to advance their learning. While the workshop covers the basics of how GenAI works and introduces simple ways it can improve students’ work, we place a strong emphasis on Intelligence Augmentation. At the core of the workshop is a course-specific application, where students collaborate with GenAI to complete a task. This application was chosen by the course coordinators (Andre and Alec) to connect it to course objectives and content. Andre, for example, asked students to develop strategies to increase exercise participation among NUS students. While GenAI can provide descriptions of common factors that may impact exercise in students and suggest a wealth of intervention strategies to address these factors, students need to consider their own lived experiences, initiatives that might be already in place, university infrastructure/resources among others. The session concludes with reflective questions, prompting students to articulate how their own ‘human’ intelligence was important to the accomplishment of the task (i.e., Intelligence Augmentation). For example, Andre asked the students ‘Who was in the driver seat; you or the GenAI? How do you know?’. Students discussed how the GenAI was helpful in giving them a starting point, but their course learnings as well as their own understanding of context were essential to come up with a viable strategy.
The workshop has been incorporated into two undergraduate and one postgraduate course, and the results are promising. Students have reported gains in knowledge, positive attitudes, increased confidence, and stronger intentions to use GenAI to support their learning in the future (Figure 3). Further iterations of the workshop are planned for different courses.
Conclusion
By taking on the more routine elements of public health practice, GenAI will reduce much drudgery. However, it will also require our graduates to operate at a higher level of sophistication and maturity earlier in their careers. As educators, we need to ensure that our students develop the deliberative and communicative skills which will enable them to thrive in this increasingly GenAI -enabled world.
Reference
Etemadi, A. & Dede, C. (2021, December 8). Preparing students to augment artificial intelligence rather than be replaced by machine learning. Teaching Times. https://www.teachingtimes.com/preparing-students-to-augment-artificial-intelligence-rather-than-be-replaced-by-machine-learning/
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Andre Matthias MÜLLER is a senior lecturer at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (SSHSPH) where he facilitates learning in courses around health promotion and holistic patient care. He obtained his PhD at the University of Malaya, Malaysia and received postdoctoral training in Behavioral Science in the UK and at NUS. As a local by choice, he loves to sip kopi in shorts and trainers. Andre can be reached at ephamm@nus.edu.sg. |
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Alec MORTON is a visiting professor at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (SSHSPH) where he teaches mostly health financing and health technology assessment. He has an interdisciplinary background and has worked or studied in Schools of science, humanities, engineering, social sciences, business, medicine and public health at one time or another. Alec can be reached at a.morton@nus.edu.sg. |
