How will answering these questions help?

This project will contribute to comprehending better the specific challenges, impacts and potentials of utilising Gen AI to support the learning of reading and writing or beginning te reo Māori for Aotearoa foundation and bridging ākonga.

The advent of Generative AI (Gen AI) has challenged all sectors of education. 

With foundation and bridging programmes, whose main objectives are to enhance writing and reading literacies and to prepare ākonga with tertiary-level academic skills, the introduction and use of Gen AI needs to be circumspect and focused. Otherwise, ākonga may become dependent on Gen AI to ‘do the writing for them’ instead of attaining skills that enable them to be able to write and communicate within the academic genre. Therefore, it is important to be able to utilise Gen AI in a measured and targeted way, to support ākonga learning but not replace them as writers.

A further challenge with Gen AI tools/apps is that for the moment, they require sufficient competencies in text reading and comprehension to access outputs as most Gen AI tools/apps respond in writing. Foundation ākonga, learning reading and writing, have found it challenging as the level of reading comprehension and responses required to understand Gen AI outputs, is often above their current capabilities.

It is also important to establish the parameters with regards to Gen AI’s role in supporting language learning. As with all forms of language learning, Gen AI can play a role in assisting the learning process. However, Gen AI chatbots are usually English dominant and often were never developed to support non-English input and output but will generate outputs in te reo Māori or other languages when this is requested.

What is Gen AI?

Gen AI is a type of AI which is able to produce multimodal outputs (i.e. text, images, sound) based on ‘prompts’ provided by users. The most recent iterations of Gen AI can draw on large databases to generate text in ‘natural language’, write software code, produce images/video/audio and are now used across many industries to support job tasks.

Examples of Gen AI include the large language model (LLM) chatbots (ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Bard etc.), text-to-image AI (Midjourney, DALL-E etc.) and derivative of these which draw on similar databases which perform more specialised functions (Grammerly, Co-Pilot etc.).

Expected Outcomes

• The guidelines derived from this study will support foundation and bridging ākonga not only in Te Pūkenga programmes, but many other programmes with similar objectives across Aotearoa and internationally.
• Both kaiako and ākonga will work together to select and match Gen AI tools to support foundation and bridging study and language learning outcomes. This will ensure ākonga perspectives on how best to use, and further develop, Gen AI to contribute towards writing and reading literacies.
• We will use this study to identify and evaluate the usefulness of contemporary Gen AI tools within the context of foundation and bridging education and the learning of te reo Māori.
• Ākonga will be supported as they utilise Gen AI to improve their writing and reading literacies and attain important AI literacy competencies including the ethical and bicultural implications of using AI to support their learning.
• The study will also provide participant tutors with the opportunities to enhance their own AI literacies, attain participatory action research skills, and increase pedagogical strategies required to work with Gen AI tools.