I disagree with the decision of lecturers to use artificial intelligence to create teaching materials (‘We could have asked ChatGPT’: students fight back over course taught by AI, 20 November), though I understand the pressures and incentives that they are responding to.
As a recent doctoral graduate, I can only get fixed or zero-hours teaching contracts. Each taught hour may take days of preparation that is not accounted for in the pay formula. I have developed material including work plans, assessments, reading lists and tutorial tasks for three different modules, requiring much more time than I was paid for. If I were able to reuse these materials, my time investment would pay off. Budget cuts and hiring freezes meant that I delivered these modules once. There is simply no incentive for someone to invest time in a module that they may teach only once on a precarious contract.
Successive governments’ refusal to invest in higher education has created a situation where the price of quality teaching is paid by teachers.
Dr Talia Hussain
London
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