TLC 2023 Key Note (Day 2): Artificial Intelligence and Humanising Pedagogy
Dr Kasturi Behari-Leak is Associate Professor in Higher Education Studies and Dean of the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. She is Director of the Academic Staff and Professional Development Unit in CHED and leads a national collaborative project on academic staff development agency. As co-chair of the Curriculum Change Working Group, she led university-wide engagements on decolonisation of the curriculum and has published in the field of higher education studies. She teaches on HES post-graduate programmes and convenes HELTASA’s University Staff Doctoral Programme. She was President of the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa and is past President of the International Consortium of Educational Development (ICED). She serves on the research advisory committee of the World Universities Network and is part of several national and international research consortia, focused on HE. She serves on editorial boards and advisory groups globally.
Statement:
Artificial Intelligence and Humanising Pedagogy: Can the artificial and the real co-exist in service of socially inclusive assessment practices? As higher education emerges from the pandemic years, where we had a renewed understanding of the value of in-person teaching as well as an appreciation for digitally enabled education through online pedagogies, we now face an emerging catalyst which could be seen as both threat and opportunity. Current attention to AI and the recent explosion of CHATGPT in our context indicate the wide range of challenges that students, academics, staff, management are bound to face. In the area of assessment, this can prove to be a formidable challenge, even crisis. That new things emerge and stretch us to re-think our ways is not the crisis itself. The crisis is whether we are clear and steadfast in our beliefs and values about what HE can and should be doing, in the face of change and disruption. Now more than ever, these key questions persist: What is the university for? Are we reflecting deeply or purposefully enough on our assessment practices in higher education? Is assessment as inclusive social and epistemic practice the segue towards embracing a socially just teaching and learning ethos for Excellence, Transformation, and Sustainability? In this keynote address, the question of humanising pedagogy is foregrounded in relation to assessment practices in a world becoming dominated by machine learning. By exploring AI in assessment through a humanising lens, to connect, share and envision a more compassionate university classroom, perhaps the artificial and the real can co-exist for mutual benefit?