From the industrial revolution to the era of digital intelligence, human beings have never stopped to develop new technologies. The increasingly mature generative artificial intelligence has brought many influences to all aspects of the development of human society, and higher education is one of the most significant areas affected by generative artificial intelligence. The influence of generative artificial intelligence on higher education includes but is not limited to assisting teachers in preparing lessons and teaching, promoting students’ autonomous learning, personalized learning and inquiry learning, assisting in paper writing, guiding students to complete homework, exam review, language learning, and improving digital literacy. It can be said that generative artificial intelligence has injected new vitality into higher education and promoted the innovation and development of education and teaching.
At present, more and more universities around the world are exploring a safe and reliable way to combine generative artificial intelligence with education and teaching, and the trend of integrating generative artificial intelligence into higher education is unstoppable.
Innovation and efficiency improvement: the influence of generative artificial intelligence on higher education
Generative artificial intelligence expands the space of higher education.First, it enriches the teaching media of higher education. Multi-modal generative artificial intelligence has multiple forms of expression, such as text, voice, picture, video, animation, etc. The training data output by the large model can be used as a shared medium for teachers to prepare lessons, students to learn, evaluate education and discuss with peers. This educational medium with the characteristics of new quality and productivity is recombined with various teaching methods and used flexibly in different educational scenes, making teaching more effective, fascinating and interesting. The second is to expand the diversity of higher education scenes. On the one hand, generative artificial intelligence can further break through the space restrictions such as classrooms and promote the globalization of educational space. In the future, any place connected to the network can be used as a learning space, which will be conducive to the realization of educational equity. On the other hand, generative artificial intelligence enriches the educational scene. For example, giving immediate instructions in the scene of students’ hands-on operation can make students’ practice and theoretical study parallel, thus further promoting the combination of theory and practice. The third is to promote the multi-dimensional interaction of education. Generative artificial intelligence makes the interactive dimension of education no longer limited to direct face-to-face communication, but suddenly increases to the Cyberspace interacting with "man-machine-man". The terminal interface gathers the interactive data of "man-machine" into the network dimension, and then presents it to the physical world after processing. Multi-dimensional interactive space means the increase of interaction frequency among educational subjects and the increase of students’ participation, and the interactive relationship of the combination of reality and reality further expands the educational situation.
Generative artificial intelligence extends education time and effectively empowers lifelong learning.Firstly, the generative artificial intelligence model relies on its powerful parallel processing ability, which can support multiple learners to participate in learning tasks at the same time, and at the same time provide personalized teaching content and feedback for each learner. This not only improves the timeliness of education, but also greatly expands the coverage of education. Secondly, generative artificial intelligence provides immediate listening, analysis and feedback for educators and educatees. The traditional education model often requires teachers to spend a lot of time correcting students’ homework before giving feedback, which greatly reduces the teaching efficiency. Generative artificial intelligence can provide immediate data support for educators, help managers make more accurate decisions, and provide immediate feedback for learners, help them find and correct mistakes in learning in time, promote the consolidation of knowledge and skills, and cultivate growth-oriented thinking. Thirdly, generative artificial intelligence empowers lifelong learning. On the one hand, generative artificial intelligence has the potential of "virtual tutor", which can promote the autonomous learning of adult learners in asynchronous online environment. On the other hand, generative artificial intelligence makes it possible for students to receive vocational education in advance. The big model and the massive resource database behind it are accessible and available, and are excellent educational resources to promote the continuous improvement of students’ vocational skills.
Generative artificial intelligence increases the educational density and improves the efficiency of personalized learning.First of all, in the field of education, the important value of generative artificial intelligence is to create personalized and adaptive learning assistance systems for students, so as to enhance students’ learning experience and high-quality development of educational results. Generative artificial intelligence model has the potential benefits of self-defining educational goals, quickly identifying teaching resources, tracking learning progress and tracking evaluation, etc. It can be used as a digital tutor in the autonomous learning environment of adult learners to make up for the disadvantages of collective teaching organization forms such as class teaching system. The introduction of generative artificial intelligence into teaching is essentially to equip every student with a powerful AI teacher, which may be regarded as a "technical repair" to the traditional teaching environment. Secondly, the multi-modal expression of generative artificial intelligence can make ordinary audience and non-expert audience understand complex scientific concepts, generate cognitive schema intuitively, and keep a deep memory impression. Generative artificial intelligence has the value of making higher education visible, and plays a vital role in popular science education, general education, interdisciplinary education and other fields. Thirdly, generative artificial intelligence gives learners greater autonomy, which can improve students’ subjective initiative and curiosity, and cultivate their problem consciousness and thinking ability to a certain extent.
Moderation: Actively Respond to the Challenges Brought by Generative Artificial Intelligence
Moderately accept generative artificial intelligence and actively embrace educational modernization.First, based on the initial mission of education, we should moderately accept generative artificial intelligence within the boundaries and promote the complementary advantages of artificial intelligence and natural intelligence. Second, adhere to the principle of using technology in a proper and orderly way, encourage colleges and universities to formulate norms and policies of generative artificial intelligence that meet the needs of their own schools, and clarify the scope, principles and guidelines of educational application of generative artificial intelligence. The third is to optimize the review and evaluation mechanism, do a good job in supervision and prevent the abuse of generative artificial intelligence. Fourth, actively embrace the transformation trend of educational modernization, create a multi-dimensional complementary and virtual-real teaching environment, reasonably embed generative artificial intelligence into classroom teaching, create a more immersive teaching situation by using technologies such as virtual reality, and use technology empowerment to awaken students’ self-cognition.
Strengthen the digital literacy of teachers and students and make good use of generative artificial intelligence.Digital literacy includes the abilities and skills that individuals need to participate in the complex information ecosystem effectively and responsibly, and also covers the moral dimensions of artificial intelligence use, including data privacy and security, academic integrity and the ability to identify false information. Educators need to constantly improve their digital literacy and take active measures to ensure that students can use generative artificial intelligence tools correctly and appropriately, and deeply understand its potential risks and moral impact, so as to avoid excessive dependence on such technologies.
Accelerate the cultivation of students’ innovative spirit and creativity, and encourage man-machine co-creation and man-machine mutual strength.Education in the era of artificial intelligence emphasizes openness and creativity, and pays more attention to differences and diversification. Higher education should focus on cultivating students’ innovative spirit and creativity, shift the focus of talent training from traditional ability training to innovative and creative ability training, and advocate cultivating students’ core competitiveness beyond machines. Therefore, firstly, colleges and universities should optimize the curriculum, encourage the development of interdisciplinary courses, develop interdisciplinary cross-learning projects focusing on cultivating innovative consciousness, and cultivate students’ ability to solve complex and practical problems. The second is to reconstruct the teaching evaluation system, from the "result perspective" to the "process perspective" of talent training, to create an inclusive and innovative cultural atmosphere and protect students’ innovative achievements. Third, we should change the concept of educational technology, from worrying about man-machine mutual exclusion to pursuing man-machine co-creation and man-machine mutual strength, and realize the optimal solution of education.
(The author is from the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of Wenzhou University; This paper is the phased achievement of Zhejiang philosophy and social science planning project "Research on the integration of professional education and entrepreneurship education in Zhejiang universities under the background of digital economy" [［23NDJC280YB］])