Alex Galvin reflects on Dr Rankin’s ‘three ages of learning’ and the impact of AI for educators. The blog outlines the different ways educational institutions are already responding to AI. Is co-construction with students the way forward?
Recent discussions about AI and specifically ChatGPT brought to mind Dr William Rankin’s reflections on Third Age Learning. Dr Rankin founded Unfold Learning and was Global Director of Education for Apple from 2013-16.
Dr Rankin talks about three ages of learning. In the first, The Age of Hands, learning was passed hand to hand. People needed to be in close physical proximity to learn from one another and the ability to learn depended on access to someone who could teach you new skills. The second age, The Age of Print, lasted from around the 15th century until fairly recently. The development of printed texts enabled information to pass more rapidly from person to person and opened up learning opportunities for all who could read. Teachers were usually among the most well-read, sharing their knowledge and supporting learners to access further reading. The Third Age, which Dr Rankin dates from around 1996, is the Age of Data. In some respects, this has democratised the distribution of information – enabling a far greater range of people to become content producers and enabling a wider range of people to determine which information is most important. However, this Third Age has also fundamentally changed how we learn and what we need to learn.
All of us now have an unfathomable wealth of information at our fingertips. We can, and do find answers to questions within seconds. The scale of the data available provides huge opportunities, but also provokes the need for a different kind of learning – the need for pupils to engage critically with the information that they receive and the skills required to navigate information channels.
These challenges are brought to the fore even more starkly in recent debates around AI. ChatGPT only launched in November 2022, but has already generated much debate, largely because what it produces is impressive. Drawing on available information and mimicking human responses it can quickly write essays, produce creative writing such as plays and poems, write music and computer programmes – to name but a few of its abilities. Similar platforms are not far behind.
From an education perspective, it has prompted concerns about the challenges it might bring for assessment. Research at the University of Pennsylvania found that ChatGPT could produce an assignment of the standard that would pass an MBA. As a result schools and universities around the world have rushed to ban it.
But is banning it desirable or even possible? Any attempts to block pupils from using it are likely to be unsuccessful and the power of technology such as this is only going to increase. And this kind of technology not only has the potential to help students complete their work – it also offers huge opportunities for teachers. As the blog post from Nadia Seaborne at GEMS Wellington International School in Dubai suggests, ChatGPT has the potential to support learning in a wide variety of ways which go far beyond cheating tests. A piece in The New York Times last month makes a similar case for embracing the opportunities it presents. Other schools have responded quickly to adjust approaches to learning rather than to attempt to block the platform.
Change can be uncomfortable, and rapid change even more so. ChatGPT may well feel like yet another pressure – something else to understand and engage with. However, perhaps this is new territory to be explored alongside your students. Perhaps the answers to the challenges it presents are best found through co-construction. We would love to hear about how you and your students are using AI – do get in touch using the feedback form below.
