How to Design and Deliver Courses for Higher Education in the AI Era: Insights from Exam Data Analysis

TL;DR

This paper proposes a pedagogical framework for designing higher education courses and exams in the AI era, emphasizing alignment with AI's strengths and educational objectives, supported by data analysis of ChatGPT-assisted exams.

Contribution

It introduces a new exam system and pedagogical approach inspired by Socratic methods, tailored for AI integration in higher education.

Findings

No correlation between student grades and ChatGPT usage in exams

AI strengths and limitations inform course and exam design

A new AI-era exam system is proposed

Abstract

In this position paper, we advocate for the idea that courses and exams in the AI era have to be designed based on two factors: (1) the strengths and limitations of AI, and (2) the pedagogical educational objectives. Based on insights from the Delors report on education [1], we first address the role of education and recall the main objectives that educational institutes must strive to achieve independently of any technology. We then explore the strengths and limitations of AI, based on current advances in AI. We explain how courses and exams can be designed based on these strengths and limitations of AI, providing different examples in the IT, English, and Art domains. We show how we adopted a pedagogical approach that is inspired from the Socratic teaching method from January 2023 to May 2023. Then, we present the data analysis results of seven ChatGPT-authorized exams conducted between December 2022 and March 2023. Our exam data results show that there is no correlation between students' grades and whether or not they use ChatGPT to answer their exam questions. Finally, we present a new exam system that allows us to apply our pedagogical approach in the AI era.