Forskning ved forskerskolen

This exploratory case study examines how AI technologies, specifically a GPT-4-based synopsis chatbot, can serve as a sparring partner for doctoral students in Norway. Despite favourable conditions, only two-thirds of Norwegian PhD candidates complete their doctorates, partly due to challenges with article-based dissertations that require a comprehensive synopsis (60–90 pages). Ambiguities and unintended double standards exist across disciplines regarding this format, despite national guidelines. To address this, we developed a synopsis chatbot by training GPT-4 on Norwegian doctoral rubrics and literature about article-based dissertations, making it more domain-specific, context-specific, and multilingual. The goal was to determine if and how the chatbot could support PhD candidates in writing their synopses. Preliminary results indicate varying levels of AI acceptance among PhD supervisors, with 60% expressing scepticism about using AI for academic writing. However, the chatbot performed well in providing formative assessment and handling multimodal illustrations, proving to be a valuable sparring partner for doctoral students. This suggests the need to update conventional theories of formative assessment to include AI and chatbots as complementary "digital supervisors" in doctoral education. While the chatbot shows promise in mitigating issues related to unwritten rules and vague genre requirements, this early-phase exploratory study acknowledges several limitations and emphasizes the need to address ethical considerations regarding AI in academia. 

Author: Rune Johan Krumsvik, UiB. 

Read the study here:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10639-024-13177-x 

This case study examines face-to-face and remote teaching in a doctoral education course and ask if flipped classroom, formative assessment and remote teaching increase the teaching quality of a literature review course. To be able to answer the research question, design-based research (DBRC, 2003) and case study (Yin, 2009) were used as a research-pedagogical design and methodological framework. The selection of informants is based on purposeful selection (Maxwell, 2005) where one group of PhD candidates (n = 24) situated at the University of Bergen and one group of PhD candidates (n = 12) situated at Volda University College, were selected. The study indicates that the PhD candidates enhanced their understanding of literature review throughout the PhD course, they appreciated the course design, and the quality of their academic papers and their survey feedback indicated that they had a good learning outcome from the course. Despite some methodological limitations, this study shows that advanced video conferencing systems in combination with a well-prepared teaching design have several positive outcomes and can be used as a starting point for a more large-scale study. The study shows, despite former mixed experiences with remote teaching, that student participation via several campuses did not necessarily lead to poorer quality and poorer learning outcome for these PhD candidates in this case study. However, the case study also shows the need for more large-scale research which will give a more nuanced and thorough understanding of how we can increase the teaching quality of remote teaching as part of the training component in the PhD.

Authors: Rune Johan Krumsvik, Lise Øen Jones, Kjartan Leer-Salvesen, Kjetil Laurits Høydal, & Fredrik Mørk Røkenes.

Read the case study here:

https://www.idunn.no/uniped/2019/02/face-to-face_and_remote_teaching_ina...