Nelson Mandela University academics have proven that ChatGPT can pass an MBA.
GQEBERHA – Two Nelson Mandela University academics received top accolades at an international business conference with their innovative research paper, which showed that ChatGPT could pass an MBA in South Africa.
Their paper titled “ChatGPT: The New MBA Student in your Class”, received the Best Paper Award at this year’s 16th International Business Conference (IBC 2023) hosted in Swakopmund, Namibia, last week (24 – 27 September).
Department of Computing Sciences Distinguished Professor, Prof Andre Calitz, and his wife, Prof Margaret Cullen, a full professor to MBA and DBA students at the Nelson Mandela University Business School, make a dynamic duo who beat over 283 other papers that were submitted to the conference.
The IBC 2023 Conference is a multi-disciplinary platform where research on recent developments in an ever-turbulent business environment is presented and debated, among academics and industry professionals from across the Southern African region and abroad.
Indeed, one of the most recent and topical technological developments which has caught many academics across the world off-guard, has been the arrival of ChatGPT in November last year. “The latest generative AI tools have disrupted and transformed the education sector globally.
ChatGPT, one of the large language model (LLMs) platforms, has challenged and changed the educational landscape for educators and students. ChatGPT passed an MBA Operational Management module exam in 2022 in the USA. The research question addressed in this paper was can ChatGPT pass MBA modules in South Africa?” said Cullen.
The award-winning Nelson Mandela academics set out, through their research, to prove whether ChatGPT could pass the examination papers of MBA modules presented at Business Schools in South Africa.
“The 2022 examination papers for MBA modules from different Business Schools in South Africa were presented to ChatGPT, answers were generated and marked by the specific course examiners. ChatGPT passed 12 of the 15 modules. The feedback provided by the examiners was that ChatGPT successfully provided facts, however when new case studies were used, the application could not produce correct answers nor insight and application,” said Calitz.
Their ground-breaking paper is a first study of this nature conducted in South Africa and Africa, and simply put, the results indicate that ChatGPT can indeed pass some MBA examinations and therefore academics need to be aware of the capabilities and limitations of ChatGPT, said Calitz.
“Presently, academics at South African Business Schools are generally not using AI tools in education, such as ChatGPT. Our paper recommends that academics and educators must adapt their instructional approaches to meet scholar and students’ unique needs,” said Calitz.
They recommend using AI supported tools and technologies to innovate and strengthen their lesson planning and presentation to engage the students, and their paper provides guidelines for the use of ChatGPT in educational programmes.
“The most important reason to work with ChatGPT is that students will graduate into a world full of generative AI programmes. We need to prepare them for the world of work, and how to best leverage technology for their chosen career paths,” said Cullen.
Alan Straton
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