AI must spark a revolution in teaching at universities so students can keep one step ahead of machines
Sun Kwok says to prepare students for the workplace of the future, universities must focus once again on teaching in addition to research and aim to develop intellectual skills that cannot easily be replaced by technology
We live in an era of drastic social change driven by technology. The internet and social media have greatly altered the ways we interact, retrieve and distribute information. When I was a student, if I needed factual information, I had to go to the library to access resources such as books and journals. If I needed to perform mathematical calculations, I worked laboriously by hand on a piece of paper.
Now I can obtain chemical formulas, properties of materials, historical facts, geographical features or symptoms of diseases instantly from my computer or smartphone. Using software and apps, I can solve differential equations or perform matrix operations in minutes, when this would have required hours of work before.
In spite of workplace changes, our mode of education has remained the same for the past 50 years. In lectures, students dutifully copy down facts delivered by teachers and then reproduce them from memory in exams. Students are given homework that involves repeating mathematical exercises so they can calculate similar problems quickly and accurately during exams. These practices are wasteful and ineffective in today’s world. Computers can do these tasks better than we can.
To prepare students for the future, universities should spend instruction time on higher-level skills. My motto is “teach the method, not the facts”. Instead of focusing on facts and techniques, students should learn from historical examples how scientists observed a natural or social phenomenon and saw underlying patterns.