“It’s the most exciting topic of recent years”, said Rogério Colaço. This is how the president of Instituto Superior Técnico referred to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, in his opening speech, at the 6th session of Contigo+ Programme.
The event took place on January 9 at the Técnico Congress Centre, Alameda campus, during which the Pedagogical Council presented the Técnico’s deliberation on the use of AI language models (such as ChatGPT) by students and professors. According to the document drawn up by the Pedagogical Council, “students should be encouraged to use these tools as a learning and work assistant”. The text also states that “professors should use AI-based tools to enrich, simplify [and] update the teaching process” and “no general prohibition should be adopted regarding the use of AI tools in teaching or assessment methods”.
Later in his speech, Rogério Colaço stressed: “we’re not in the 80s or 90s of the last century – today’s students are different from those we had 40, 30, 20, five or six years ago”. According to the president of Técnico, the most striking difference is that these students “have grown up with different access to information”. He also recalled that unlike a hierarchical model of teaching where the teacher holds all the knowledge, today “students have the same information, or more because they have a better grasp of technology”.
Teresa Peña, president of the Pedagogical Council, emphasised the need to combine these tools “with traditional assessment methods with increasing interaction between professor and student – more oral exams, more presentations, more discussions”. She also called for the use (or not) of AI tools to be made explicit in the assessment method. She also talked about the limited reliability of these tools, reminding users of the need to be critical.
Arlindo Oliveira, professor and former president of Técnico, gave a talk on “the impact of artificial intelligence technologies on the teaching process and knowledge assessment”. The speaker emphasised the school’s role in dealing with AI developments, “Técnico has to be prepared not only for the current state of technology, but also for what will be the future of technology in five or ten years”. Highlighting the power of AI in education, he pointed out that “the capacity of these systems as personalised tutors should not be underestimated and we must be able to take the most of it”.
At the end of the talk, there was an exchange of ideas between the speaker and the audience, focused on exploring the logistical impact of using AI tools in assessment. The event also included talks by professors Carlos Silva (“Elementary applications of generative AI in teaching”) and João Ferreira (“Using AI to Increase Productivity in Teaching”) and respective exchange of ideas.
The Pedagogical Council’s deliberation follows the work carried out by the REFLeT Commission (‘Reflection on Teaching and Training in the Era of Large Language Models’), which included a group of experts who produced a report on this topic in July. Chaired by Arlindo Oliveira, the commission brought together members of the Scientific Council (Eduardo Júlio; Pedro Lima) and the Pedagogical Council (Carlos Silva; João Pimentel Nunes), all of them Técnico professors, as well as people from outside Técnico (Paulo Mota Pinto and Porfírio Silva).
