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THEIHERALD
March 8, 2023
meredithherald.com
ChatGPT’s Influence on Higher Education
By ChatGPT, an OpenAI software
Interviews compiled by Aminah Jenkins, Editor in Chief, and Freya Dahlgren, Associate Editor
ChatGPT, an artificial
intelligence (AI) language model
developed by OpenAI, has gained
widespread popularity for its abil
ity to generate human-like text in
response to a given prompt. How
ever, its use in higher education has
raised concerns about academic
integrity and the potential impact
on student learning. To better
understand the views of faculty
members at Meredith College, The
Herald interviewed two professors
from the English Department, Dr.
Julie Schrock and Professor Ashley
Hogan.
When asked about her
first encounter with ChatGPT, Dr.
Schrock said, "I first heard about
it over the break between semes
ters on Twitter." Dr. Schrock also
mentioned that there has been little
discussion among faculty members
about the AI software's existence
and use at Meredith. "From my
perspective, it is too new to evalu
ate its impact."
Professor Hogan first heard
about ChatGPT in December 2022.
, "My understanding is that it is a
computer application that uses
artificial intelligence to perform
searches, answer questions and
create documents by taking user
input and cross-checking that
against public information on the
internet." When asked about the
potential impact of the program on
higher education. Professor Hogan
said, "I think it has the potential to
do both [good and bad], depend
ing on how we use it." She added,
"With time, we may be able to find
ways to incorporate it into our in
struction and assignments as a tool
that students can use in the idea- or
drafting- phase of writing."
Regarding the impact of the
program on their areas of work,
both faculty members had similar
views. Dr. Schrock said, "It has not
influenced my work thus far." She
added that many of her students'
assignments involve analyzing
what happens in classrooms, which
ChatGPT cannot do. Professor Ho
gan mentioned that while she had
experimented with inputting her
assignments into the program, she
found that "even if a student used
ChatGPT for a writing assignment,
they would have to tweak and de
velop the essay a great deal to end
up with a strong essay."
When asked whether it is
easy to tell if a student has used the
software for an assignment, both
faculty members agreed that they
did not have enough experience
to determine this. "The result I
got when I experimented with
the app did not read like most
student writing and wasn't near
ly as developed as I require,"
said Professor Hogan.
Both faculty members
emphasized the need to explore
how ChatGPT can be used as a
tool to support learning, rather
than how it can be used to police
whether or not students are
using it. "I have not, and don't
intend to try, to police the use of
it,” Dr. Schrock stated.
"My view is that, the
stronger our AI gets, the more
we will need human intelligence to
understand how to use these tools
ethically," said Professor Hogan,
and "They aren't going anywhere, so
we need to learn how we can use AI
to enhance instead of replace learn
ing."
This article was written in
collaboration with OpenAI’s Chat
GPT. The overall generation process
involved a series of 13 questions and
answers with the program, includ
ing the sending of full interview
responses two times in order to gen
erate a full article. This article also
received standard content and copy
edits per The Herald’s publication
process.
■
As ChatGPT takes the world by storm, some have begun to question if students in
higher education will benefit from it (Photo by Grayson Morris)
Students Impacted by HVAC Issues
By Riley Heeb, Reporter
The weather in Raleigh is
often unpredictable. From days
of extreme heat to weekends with
severe thunderstorms, it can be
difficult to navigate the natural ele
ments. At Meredith, these changes
have caused issues with the heat
ing and cooling systems. HVAC
systems have needed repairs that
have impacted class scheduling and
students’ living situations.
Many students, including
Cambria Chandler, ‘26, had com
plaints regarding the temperature
irregularities. She stated that “the
temperature in the residence halls
has been awful” and that the heat
has made it difficult to sleep at
night. As a student athlete. Chan
dler commented on how the heat
impacts her and her teammates
after conditioning.
She stated that they are “of
ten very hot and overheating” and
that “the halls are brutal to walk
through for how hot it is in them.”
Chandler also noted how unreliable
the HVAC system can be. “It took
a week for the [HVAC system] to
switch to cooling for it to not even
work,” she stated.
Todd Lechner, Director of
Facilities Services, explained that
the buildings are on a computer-
controlled system and that they
“follow the industry standard of 72
degrees for [Meredith] set points
for all buildings.”
Lechner stated that “the
residence halls have a unique con
figuration that requires our HVAC
technicians to manually perform
the changeover from heating to
cooling and cooling to heating.” He
explained that Facilities Services
have to consider other factors, such
as how long the change takes and
how occupants on higher floors in
residence halls will be impacted.
“The facilities department makes
its recommendation to Residence
Life and The Residence Life team
ultimately makes the decision on
the appropriate time to execute the
switchover from heating to cool
ing or vice versa,” he explained.
The variability of weath
er in North Carolina also plays a
role in how effective the HVAC
system is. Lechner noted that
these temperature changes im
pact their decision-making year
round. “This makes it difficult
to determine the appropriate
timeframe to execute the heating
versus cooling decision for the
residence halls,” he stated.
The Herald reached out
to Donna LaHaye and Sam Dis-
tefano from Residence Life for
comment, but did not receive a
response at the time of publica
tion.
Beyond weather-related
changes, there were also re
pairs made to the HVAC system
in Lux in early February. The
building experienced extremely
high and low temperatures that
led to most classes being held on
Zoom or cancelled altogether.
Lechner stated that “the HVAC
team has replaced multiple stearn
control thermostats on the radi
ant heaters throughout the build
ing which allow[s] the wall radiant
heaters to modulate the tempera
ture independently” and that since
then there have been no further
issues.
Regarding the heat in the
academic buildings, Chandler stated
that “even some classes are hot and
make it hard for students to focus
on their studies when they are wor
ried about overheating just sitting
in their classrooms.”
Chandler also added that
she believes an update to the heat
ing and cooling system is necessary
because it appears “out of date and
not efficient.” However, Lechner
believes that “with the various
heating systems installed, we are
very fortunate to have such a highly
skilled HVAC team to evaluate and
repair these very different types of
equipment.”