Dr. DAI Haimin’s research highlights at UNU Macau AI Conference 2024

Recently, the UNU (United Nations University) Macau AI Conference 2024 took place in Macau. This year, its theme is "AI for All: Bridging Divides, Building A Sustainable Future". The event convened a delegation of 30 ICT ministers and senior officials from the Global South and more than 400 representatives from the global academic community, international organisations, and social groups. Dr. DAI Haimin from SOE attended the conference and presented her recent research findings on "Achieving Agency in the Era of ChatGPT".

This research delves into the evolving discourses surrounding ChatGPT, a cutting-edge language model, and its growing impact on higher education. ChatGPT has a powerful ability to comprehend natural languages and generate human-like text to address queries and provide solutions across a wide range of subjects. However, the pedagogical promises of this artificial intelligence technology come with ethical dilemmas, academic integrity, and challenges associated with integrating ChatGPT into language education. This exploratory study conducted in-depth interviews with eight language instructors in Chinese universities to explore how they navigate these benefits and challenges introduced by ChatGPT and how they achieve their agency in response to technological innovations. Our study revealed that teachers actively harnessed ChatGPT, thoughtfully considering their role within the educational landscape as human beings and, more precisely, as non-native language educators in this AI era. They evaluated their competencies, the needs of their students and the demand of the future world, thereby exercising their agency in integrating AI into their language research and teaching practices. The investigation of teachers’ agency through both temporal and relational dimensions uncovers the diverse expressions of agency, which can inform the development of tailored professional development programs aimed at bolstering teachers’ agency and resilience to the changes introduced by technological advancements.

Written by DAI Haimin

Edited by CHEN Ruoxi