The profound aim and objective of teaching is to develop critical thinking among the learners vis a vis the acquisition of necessary skills and information, as is stressed by almost every syllabus. But in our country, things have always taken a different path in matters of progress and the same holds good for the Learners. They get from the current system only the older and sometimes obsolete information and in some cases are unaware of the practical application of that information. Moreover, Critical Thinking has so far remained a dream because it is neglected by the conventional system which stresses rote learning without questioning the validity of the information being fed. For Critical Thinking, extensive reading with questions in mind is very necessary. The same is marred further because of the advent of AI, capable of providing ready-made answers to the questions posed and thus eliminating the need for books, conventional teachers, and classroom practices.
AI is a reality now that is going nowhere and is rather becoming part and parcel of our life. It is writing amazing essays, it is converting from text to speech, photo and video and the vice versa. Like reading from Internet could not avoided and today we have wealth of information on the same, we will not be able to keep AI intelligent blocked. Already people at every level are benefitting from it in multiple ways from making movie to writing a book. The need of the hour is to devise new strategies and methodologies of teaching which may not only help us train skills to our students but also not let it harm us in anyway. One such strategy is the Question based teaching methodology termed as QBLC (Question Based Learning for Comprehension).
Critical Thinking has so far remained a dream because it is neglected by the conventional system.
QBLC stresses on asking relevant contextualized questions to investigate, formulate questions correctly, evaluate the results, and discern the information they can use later. This method is more workable than Instruction-based Learning because it allows the students to explore their previous ideas and synthesize the new information to solve the issues of the subject and the practical world, while simultaneously developing metacognitive skills through collaboration. This method of using AI in classroom has proven useful in developing critical thinking skills by focusing on the students which almost every modern methodology is emphasizing. It also helps the students to Learn how to learn by enabling them to choose and select the information they need from the ever-increasing sea of information.
QBLC suggests bringing the questions in the classroom and teacher can only supervise these questions when being designed about the topic to be explored. These questions may be integrated in the classroom and put to AI. Students can find multiple solutions of these Question by using AI tools in multiple useful ways. Students will learn from not only their Question but the answers also that ChatGPT for example can provide. This enhances their communication abilities also. It has been demonstrated by many classes that in the presence of AI students were more interested in the class and could understand the topic quickly, easily and intelligently. It is not simply the answers to the questions, it minimizes the burdens of the teacher as well. He can devise sketches, shapes, pictures, and video demonstrations through the tool of AI without spending longer hours on making slides and preparing other relevant materials on papers or white boards. Thus, AI has got the potential to facilitate not the learner simply but also the teachers, effectively and positively.
It is expected, as usual, that this mode of teaching would invite huge criticism from all four corners generated out of many baseless fears. This may include religious and moral objections and the baseless fears of being eliminated and supplanted by machines. AI is a phenomenon that is about to engulf us all around and to bring a revolution in teaching, learning and education. Refusal to accept it and employee it would mean depriving our next generation to compete with the world. While it may be accepted that in some areas of our country it may not be implemented because of the lack of required facilities, but then the cell phone operations in such areas can solve the issue. We need to help our students by equipping them with the tools of the future instead of keeping them unaware of the knowledge, skill and training that AI can provide. What we must do to welcome this revolutionary tool of education is that the teacher must train himself to harness its potential and to understand his new role in the classroom. Further, the funding should be provided for the availability of machines to use AI in the classroom and generate an environment to facilitate the learners for conducive workplace. We must, however, develop an ethical code of conduct for using AI in our classroom before we launch its operation.
The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson University, Multan. He can be reached at [email protected] and Tweets at @Profzee