Hyderabad: The ubiquity of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered tools cannot be denied anymore. It has permeated the walls of classrooms to the extent that students are relying on AI chatbots for clearing their doubts rather than interacting with their teachers.
Tools like ChatGPT functioning as a search engine (however, they are not search engines), they remove the hard work a user has to do to verify the responses. Additionally, it also customises the responses according to the user's taste. This has led teachers and students alike to use these services for teaching and learning.
When it comes to medical education, students use ChatGPT to prepare for exams like NEET PG. "The exam is entirely theory-based, so you can instruct ChatGPT to test you on some conceptual questions and help you prepare for the exam," said Abhinav Yadav, a first-year MBBS student at ESI Hyderabad.
"In classrooms, we have various formative discussions and debates on medical topics where we often use AI as a moderator. AI being a neutral observer in controversial topics helps us set an equilibrium between both sides. The voice assistant gives suggestive corrections," he added.
Furthermore, an AI-powered application called Medical Notes is used by students to make notes on certain concepts. "When we upload a video of the lecture, it converts it into notes," said Abhinav.
While these applications might assist in learning, there are certain drawbacks as well. To avoid the embarrassment of asking a silly question or giving a wrong response to a teacher's question in the classroom, students are refraining from interacting at all.
"It is happening with the younger students more so now that they depend on AI-generated content more than a physical interaction with the teacher. Students forget that it is a good slave but a bad master. To find an answer to a one-minute question in class, they watch an hour-long video. They will spend hours searching on the internet for something that can be cleared in a small interaction with a teacher. In the process, they tend to get distracted also," said Dr Ch Santhosh Babu, Associate Professor of Surgery, Gandhi Medical College.
Dr Santhosh Babu himself does not refrain from using ChatGPT where it is directly useful. He uses it to prepare lecture notes, but with some caution.
"Conceptual learning can only be assisted with AI. It cannot replace other resources. ChatGPT helps me and also some students to refine our sentences and make them more reader-friendly. It is very good at making tables and flow-charts. Some tools also help me generate medical pictures that serve as pedagogical aids in the classroom," he said.
Dr Santhosh Babu said that since it's a self-learning tool, after some usage, it learns the type of responses the user needs and customises them accordingly. "If a layman asks a medical question, it will respond in that language. But since it has tracked my requirements as a medical professor, it gives me exactly what I need," he said.
The medical curriculum allows for 'self-directed learning', where students are encouraged to do some preliminary research on some concepts that are to be taught. "If I have to teach anatomy of thyroid, I will ask students to first develop a basic understanding of the concept through their own research. They can use their own resources, books, videos, AI, etc. Then in the next class, we ask them questions and further learning takes place from there," he said.
Apart from teaching and learning, Dr Santhosh Babu has also used ChatGPT to make duty rosters for interns in the hospital. "All one has to do is give some instructions like 'there are seven interns in a batch and each has to do one night shift and two afternoon shifts' and it will develop a duty roster. Of course, it will not always be fool proof and needs corrections. But it reduces a lot of time and effort," he said.
The most rampant usage of ChatGPT is seen among software engineers, where they use AI for completing codes, breaking down data structures, sorting algorithms, or visualisation of concepts.
"It may help at the intermediate level but has many problems for deep learning. Those using it excessively soon realise that it is quite frustrating to find a code on ChatGPT. You have to talk back and forth and need a few iterations to get a good code out of it," said Aruvi, a programming trainer at a private company.
"ChatGPT is a machine learning language-based model that gives responses based on probability and completely disregards mathematics and logical reasoning. More than that, it is built to make you feel you are always right. That makes it quite dangerous for a learner," Aruvi said.
"Whatever is bad about learning with ChatGPT was not invented by ChatGPT. People have found bad shortcuts for learning through ChatGPT and that has been happening throughout the history of humankind and you have to deal with it all as a teacher anyway," Aruvi said.
Students in other streams such as commerce, architecture and even literature courses are using ChatGPT for making presentations, writing assignments and scanning pdf files. While more empowered tools are available to help with research and design, they are not available for free.
"Students are using it for writing assignments but I try to structure the questions in a way that they have to apply their minds for writing the answers. The assignments are heavily focused on the discussions we have in the classrooms," said Surender Negi, professor, English department at EFLU.
Some studies show that not only for learning, students are also using ChatGPT for deciding on career choices. According to the 2024 Annual Student Quest Report (SQR), over 85 per cent of students are utilising ChatGPT for career guidance, specifically for tasks such as essay writing, career research, and university selection.
"There are ways it can be constructive as well as cheat the system. I feel tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and even more focused academic tools actually help in the learning process, even creative process. It makes learning more personalised and democratic," said Jaspreet Bindra, co-founder of AI & Beyond and AI teacher at Cambridge and Ashoka University.
How students use ChatGPT to prepare for competitive exams:
Give ChatGPT instructions like 'Give me a mock test to prepare for NEET PG'.
It will give a set of questions in the MCQ format and ask you to finish it in 10-15 mins.
Answer the questions and ChatGPT will then tell you the score
Give further instructions like 'Tell me why the answer to Q2 is wrong' and it will give you the justification for it.
It acts as moderator in debates and can help make notes from video lectures
How teachers prepare lecture notes with ChatGPT:
Create case scenarios for clinical teaching
Generate exam questions
Detailed explanations and simplified notes
Outline sections for smooth transitions between topics
