Category Archives: Reflection during Covid-19

Integrating ChatGPT in English Language Teaching in Nepalese Community Schools: Opportunities and Challenges

AI in Language, Case Studies, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Education in General, ELT Resource, How AI help in shaping language, reflection, Reflection during Covid-19, Reflections, Research paper, Teacher Education, Teacher identity, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teachers' narratives, Teaching Tips, Technology, Technology in ELT, ,
Mr. Arjun Jung Rayamajhi

Introduction

 The development of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the global education system. ChatGPT and effective AI models are now essential innovations in the language teaching and learning field. By providing technology to community schools with limited resources and infrastructure, scholars can gain insight into the potential and challenges of AI in resource-poor environments. This paper is a reflection of the recent empirical studies and my personal experience as a teacher and researcher to relate critically to the effects of ChatGPT on English language teaching. The input analyses the moderation through which AI transforms pedagogy, addresses learners’ differentiated desires, and works under the moral and infrastructural measurement of AI technology in Nepal. The data of this input are grounded in teacher interviews, classroom observations, and student-centred surveys, digging deep into the use and impact of AI tools. The output provides recommendations for maximising ChatGPT use to promote language acquisition in resource-scarce classrooms while alleviating accessibility, training, and moral challenges.

The ChatGPT: A Personalized and Engaging Commitment

The individualized ChatGPT capability to provide learners with feedback that is personal and immediate has been a possible offer of integration of learners up until now; something that is not practicable in a typically busy community classroom. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence model called OpenAI, which is a state-of-the-art generative machine that can understand and produce human-like text after recognition of the given output. It is, in other words, a pillage of the substitution of creative slaves. It is also a testament to the increasing sensibility that there is a need for differentiated instruction (Zhang, 2022). In its essence, the ChatGPT implies that learners should learn at a pace which is commensurate with the timing that befits them. I personally think the OpenAI model is selfish and a more strenuous taskmaster. The state-of-the-art artificial intelligence OpenAI is more observant than a schoolteacher is and is a capable assistant anytime, even when students are away from the classroom (Sharma & Koirala, 2021). It makes the conversation more interactive and more exciting; the chatbot responds in the way the learner asks the questions. This miraculous discovery also helps shift it from the strength of monologue teaching, making space for the value of voices by offering the learners opportunities to communicate, share, be more interactive, and engage in the conversation (Patel & Uddin, 2022). Indeed, it is a deviation that it is possible because the basis for differentiation and the structure of any learning system is a one-size-fits-all mentality (Thapa, 2021). Time has changed, and increasing sensitivity embraces the ideas of differentiated instruction in such a diversity of educational responses from the learners.

 Pedagogical Transformation: From Deliverer to Facilitator

As for the pedagogical transformation, the other phenomenon observed with the help of ChatGPT is the possibility to shift the role of teachers from the main source of knowledge to the person who designs the improved learning processes (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). The key manifestation of this AI incorporation was the opportunity to use AI not as the medium to replace a teacher but as a tool that supports the learning process. In this way, teachers stop being the main content deliverers and become the facilitators and guardians of the AI-supported learning process. Generally, teachers are also communicators and problem-solvers; they possess the complex skill set that they should hand down to their students. The example of the pedagogical transformation made me reflect on the potential of teachers to design more individualistic and student-friendly plans that incorporate a range of AI-based tools. This, of course, requires teachers to become literate in AI and be aware of the options and the limitations of machines in their problem-solving strategies. To me, such a transfer implies a range of professional development opportunities, a permissive organisational culture, and facilitating policies regarding the conditions under which teachers can participate in experimentation and engage in reflective practice.

 Confronting Challenges: Infrastructure and Equity

I acknowledge that the successful integration of AI requires teachers to balance the affordances of the digital media and their professional judgment and situational knowledge. It challenges teachers to organise print-based interpretations so that the students’ work is steerable, so that it can provide the role of humans, such as motivation and ethical guidance, because their work was or could be used to take advantage of the affordances of the artefact. Even though I view my reflection from an optimistic perspective, it is a fact that the infrastructural and resource challenges persist in the schools of Nepalese communities. For instance, the lack of internet connections, the lack of digitalisation of the devices, and sporadic power interruptions become an obstacle to the promise of the integration of AI. Socially, such disparities present threats of increasing the inequities in education that would favour the students in cities or good school districts over disadvantaged rural students. I think my reflection necessitates an immediate policy action to close this gap and investments in enhancing digital infrastructure and the fair distribution of technology.

 Ethical Considerations: Striking a Balance between Innovation and Integrity

Another ethical aspect that has been imprinted in my mind was the issue of danger. While ChatGPT has the potential of becoming a learning scaffold, one of its applications, the unregulated and unrestricted use, could lead to more plagiarism, reduced creativity, and a weaker need for critical thinking. All three problems touch upon excuses issued by educators when talking about ChatGPT. In my view, the solution is neither to eliminate the use of AI nor to promote the paradigms of its application that would be equitable. Teachers and policymakers play the most active role in the promotion of decency, offering students digital ethics lessons that teach them how to use AI tools meaningfully and responsibly. In the Nepalese context, a considerable amount of national and institutional support is needed. On a national scale, the government should adopt a policy that would regulate the use of AI in education, making it more just. For this, the curricula change is a must, with digital ethics and literacy being added. Moreover, the government should offer guidance and resources for educators, explaining how to use AI responsibly. On the institutional scale, a school should pay due attention to the note of how important academic honesty, perseverance in the face of misuse, and the desire to solve problems instead of finding an easy way out are. Teachers will always be in need; such moral custodians will have to teach students how to become their own moral mentors, inciting them to use ChatGPT as a source of inspiration for development, rather than praise for creativity.

Moving toward Sustainable Integration: Policy Support and Professional Development

As has been discussed above, the integration of ChatGPT cannot be successful via a technical training programme but rather one that is evidence-based with pedagogical, ethical, and reflection aspects. From the reflection I have undertaken, professional development is continuous, situational, and participatory. The aspects can create teacher confidence and innovativeness. Education policymakers can help in developing clear guidelines and ethical norms that ensure AI supplements the current subject matters and increases universal access. To achieve this measure, the initiatives should be co-designed with teachers, students, and communities to be culturally responsive and viable.

Conclusion

 This paper discusses the implementation of ChatGPT in Nepalese community schools, identifying its benefits and drawbacks, and analyzing its potential contribution to English language acquisition. It discusses AI applications like ChatGPT, which offers the possibility to experience a personalized learning process and support engagement growth in the underprivileged setting. The implementation of ChatGPT at Nepalese community schools offers more advantages than disadvantages. While achieving individual educational plans and centring students resulted in multiple case benefits, this method requires stronger control on the part of teachers, infrastructural investments, and ethical considerations regarding the current programme. Policymakers and teachers can use this to understand that while the introduction of new technology can be more advantageous, this consideration should also be supported with a relevant and sensitive approach based on the context and students’ perspectives. This paper confirms the opinion on the potential extension of the educational process with the help of technology. However, it also emphasizes the significance of the human factor, critical thinking, and ethical competence.

The implementation of ChatGPT in Nepalese community schools can truly be an opportunity. It seems to be the most eternal way to individualised learning, which guarantees student interest with the help of an approach based on an individualistic manner. Still, it has a number of challenges, such as the appearance of new teacher roles, impacts on infrastructure, and the necessity to consider ethical considerations all the time. The future of AI-enhanced language learning is conditioned by the context-targeted planning and assumes the consideration of the educator’s expertise, institutional and national policy, and independence of the students.

 References

 Adhikari, P., & Pradhan, S. (2021). Digital inequality and its impact on education in Nepal.    International Journal of Education and Development, 43, 2, 114–128.

Bates, T. (2020). Teaching with AI: Embracing artificial intelligence in education.            Educational Technology Journal, 58, 6, 22–34.

Bhandari, S. (2021). Promoting digital literacy in Nepal’s education system. Asian Journal of Educational Research, 5, 3, 45–52.

Bista, B. (2022). AI and education: Opportunities and challenges in Nepalese community schools. Journal of Nepalese Education, 17, 1, 88–101.

Brown, T., Mann, B., Ryder, N., Subbiah, M., Kaplan, J. D., Dhariwal, P., … & Amodei, D. (2020). Language models are few-shot learners. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 33, 1877-1901.

Gautam, M. (2021). Teacher preparedness for AI integration in education in Nepal. Journal of Modern Education, 25, 4,110-125.

Giri, A. (2021). Differentiated instruction in Nepal’s classrooms: An AI perspective. Nepal Journal of Education Studies, 9, 2, 102–114.

Hwang, G. J., & Chu, H. C. (2021). AI-assisted personalized learning and its effects on student performance. Educational Technology Research and Development, 69, 1, 87–104.

Khatiwada, S., & Bhandari, P. (2022). Pedagogical transformation through AI in Nepalese schools. Journal of Educational Development, 10, 1, 50–64.

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M.J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108, 6, 1017–1054.

Zhang (2022). Towards risk-aware artificial intelligence and machine learning systems: An overview. Decision Support Systems, 159, 113800.

Patel, P., & Uddin, M. N. (2022). AI for algorithmic auditing: Mitigating bias and improving fairness in big data systems. International Journal of Social Analytics, 2(1), 49.

Thapa, K. (2021). Adapted long short-term memory for concurrent human activity recognition. Computers, Materials &Continua, 69(2),16531670.

 

Author’s Bio: Mr Arjun Jung Rayamajhi is an MPhil scholar in English Language Education at Kathmandu University. He is a secondary-level English language teacher at a community school in Nepal, where he has been actively engaged in classroom teaching, academic mentorship, workshops, and training. His research areas are ICT and ICT-based teaching. He can be reached at arayamajhi16@gmail.com.

 

My learning during pandemic

reflection, Reflection during Covid-19, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, ,
                Parista Rai

During this COVID – 19 pandemic, we all have been facing adverse in all the sectors including education. Our dynamic students with creative minds could not remain untouched from this awful situation. But as a teacher I always thought and tried my best to make them feel not panicked by initiating remote teaching class. As I was a novice teacher to teach my students virtually, it took me long time to gain self-confidence to use online teaching tools which are available and have been using by many teachers. When I began to teach my students virtually, I did not have to follow the course that we have been adopting. So, I was thinking of an idea to teach reading texts to my learners in different ways. The reason, I myself was not happy with my teaching method as I used to tell my students to read paragraphs turn by turn. Later, I started explaining what was already given there. In fact, I was applying the traditional teaching techniques but I was not feeling comfortable with them. So, I thought of a different idea to make my learners productive in my class. I always wanted their involvement and active participation. In fact, I was not satisfied with the teaching technique that I was adopting. I thought for many days as I was in dilemma having many ideas that whether to or not to initiate. Finally, I was determined to transform one of my regular classes to totally student centered class.

As per my plan, I circulated my opinion to them and they also were willing to accept the challenge. As we all agreed upon the plan, I started to assign them different reading materials. Each day, a student had to present on the topic that s/he got and rest of the students had to come up with at least three questions to ask after their friend’s presentation. To raise questions, everyone had to go through the reading material and prepare questions as per their wish. At the end of the class, they all had to share our personal experiences among all the class members. Students’ presentation in the class transformed my class into a productive class as I always dreamt about.

In my first class, one of my students was so brilliant that was beyond my expectation. He came with some slides putting some pictures which were related to the given story that enriched his work. It was good indeed! The performance of my ninth grader was wonderful. At that moment, I recalled Benjamin Franklin’s famous saying, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn”. In line with this saying, I attempted to enhance their learning experience by assigning them do presentations. They were involved in the given task and class was engaging indeed. The next classes also went well. In fact, the students who raised questions were really excited to ask the presenter and have discussion. Observing the class, I felt that I had to initiate the same step on the same day.

The initiation was one of my best decisions I had ever made. From this experience I came to know that offering opportunities and challenges to every individual helps to cope with the fear of not being able to present themselves among their friends and teachers. Similarly, it made me think that reading comprehension texts which are given in the course book can be taught differently in the active involvement of our learners. It made me realize that I as a teacher have to reflect, rethink, and renew my existing teaching ideas to add flavor in teaching and learning activities and to innovate  my own teaching techniques and students’ involvement.

The next thing is that we as teachers can collect authentic reading materials from authentic sources to use in our class that provides learners an opportunity to taste different genres. As I have experienced, when we go through the reading text for our regular courses, our learners tell us that they have already gone through them. It always struck in my mind and felt that students were not interested to go through the same text except to solve the exercises which are given based on the text. But, when I approached to my learners closely, it made them curious, responsible and creative. I always found my learners as curious readers. I thought why not to bring other different reading materials which make them inquisitive reader and help them to envision their creativity. For this, I tried to select some of the reading materials from the resourceful site https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/general-english/stories to offer my learners new experience and to motivate them to be involved in different reading activities.

Apart from aforementioned techniques, I was able to enhance my teaching skill grabbing a numbers of other opportunities during this situation. I was able to put my thought into practice which became fruitful for me and my learners. A year ago I would feel worried about conducting reading classes although I had new ideas to replace the commonly used technique. I did not have self-confidence to practice new technique, but this situation made me learn about myself and my learners. It was not just a hard time for me, instead it offered me various opportunities to reflect on my own work and relearn the several concepts about teaching and learning. I also got chance to explore that teaching reading can be taught in multiple ways to add the new flavor in teaching and learning process.

During this period, I myself became able to move a step ahead. It was entirely a learning period for me. My normal class was replaced by different related videos and pictures which were meaningful to teach my learners certain expressions and words in English. I could use the audio visual aids to my class virtually which were not possible for me in the physical class even though I was aware of the implication of those teaching aids. Using audio visual materials during regular intervals assists learners to provide clear understanding on the related topics. If I had to take physical classes, I would be unable to use all those resources to make my class more engaging, interesting and communicative.

Similarly, I invited my colleague to observe my virtual classes and provide feedback on them which made me reflect on my lessons from other’s point of view and improve further. At the same time, I got an opportunity to observe my fellow teacher’s lesson which broadened my perspectives on teaching and learning in the virtual classroom. Conducting peer observation was to some extent difficult to manage in physical class because of busy schedule of teachers. But when we started our class virtually, this idea came into my mind again and ultimately I was successful. It was really good experience of being observed by my colleagues and receiving feedback and having long discussion after the class. In fact, peer observation helps to address some issues in my class.

Through virtual mode, I took some free online courses which updated my professional skills. These course offered many innovative ideas from the teachers from home and abroad. Having discussion with the people from different countries is one of the best experiences that I have ever had during attending online courses and they offered me new insights in my area of interests. During the situation, I engaged myself attending webinars and workshops which helped me to develop professionally.

To conclude, this global pandemic situation has been a boon for many teachers like me to update professional knowledge and skill. It has really been a new experience of learning new ways, new strategies and ideas in my profession as an English teacher.

Author’s bio:

Mrs. Parista Rai graduated from Kathmandu University in 2016.  Her first attempt to write a reflection was published in this magazine in 2014. She currently works as a full time secondary level English teacher at Holy Garden English Secondary School in Bhaktapur. She is a life member of Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA). She likes attending teacher workshops, training, reading and writing.