What are the alternatives for 90-minute lectures? Does ChatGPT mean the end of essays written by students? We've sat down to talk about challenges of education with prof. Inna Romānova, Vice dean for Science at Faculty of Economics in University of Latvia. She arrived at our university thanks to “Visiting Professors” initiative. 

MJ: - What will you do here during your two-week stay? 

Prof. Inna Romanova: First, I would like to say, that it’s my pleasure to be here. I came to the University of Gdańsk to hold lectures with the Bachelor, Master and Executive MBA students, as well as to discuss the possible topics of joint research with my colleagues. So far, we have talked about the study process and the challenges we are facing, discussing also how should we change our teaching methods. 

What has been the approach to teaching economics, so far? 

All professors have their own. But I think the old method with 90 minutes of lectures without a break cannot be the only one. Nowadays, we have more group tasks, more dialogue and discussions with the students. Besides, it’s becoming more and more important for University graduates to have so-called soft skills. 

One of those methods is project based learning. Could you maybe explain how does it differ from the “old school approach”? 

At my university, we often use the project-based learning. For example, students need to work out a project for establishing a new business. Therefore, they have to think about what kind of legal form that business should have. What kind of products or services can they offer to the customers? How can they reach the customers? Who are their competitors? What could be the potential future development of the market? Moreover, the students need to prepare a financial plan for the project. We have found this approach to be rather effective as it puts together everything the students have learned in different study courses. This approach allows them to find out what is critical, when starting a business. Apart from gaining the essential skills, students can also understand whether it is something they want to do in the future.

You have proposed some of these changes in your own university in Latvia.  Was it easy? Were some people more opposed to that than others? 

Well, it depends on what do you want to change. Sometimes changes are not easy at all, but sometimes, if you see that the changes are logical, you are happy to introduce them. The world is changing. For example, more frequent use of the artificial intelligence will change the studies as well. We have started the discussion about how we can use this technology in higher education.

ChatGPT is a very useful tool, but it cannot create innovation. It can only create different variations from what it had learned. It’s also a very good tool to do your homework for you. Do you know how to implement this tool in such a way that students can use it for learning, not cheating? 

Universities cannot ignore development of the artificial intelligence, e.g., the ChatGPT. It’s a tool, that helps to create an answer to every question, but there are still some weaknesses. The citations are not available, so it's rather difficult to check whether the information is true or not. We were thinking if it’s possible to use ChatGPT or any other program for a good purpose, creating an additional value for the students.

How do plan to do that? 

Some time ago I have tried out ChatGPT, I've asked different questions about the future. It was rather interesting for me to see the answers.  At the moment, I don't know how will I use it for the teaching purposes, but I have some ideas. Recently, we have talked about it with the colleagues here at the University of Gdańsk. We thought it might be useful to let students critically analyse the output of ChatGPT as the output can be imprecise. This could be one of the possible usages of this technology in education. 

During your stay, you’ll also conduct a seminar for scientist from Faculty of Economics about preparing scientific articles. What parts of this process do you want to talk about during the meeting?  

Well, I think it will be more a discussion. I would like to discuss how we can improve our research skills and how we can enhance the quality and increase the quantity of publications. It’s essential to know the ways to overcome the challenges that each researcher sooner or later may face, like the availability of data, as for the researchers the data availability can be crucial.

In one of your own articles, you wrote about the impact of population aging and stratification in Latvia. What was the state of the country in 2016 when you wrote that publications, and how has it changed during those seven years?  

This paper was written within the project we were involved in about the population stratification and the challenges related to the pension system. We have studied regional, economic and social differences between people. This was rather large project in which a number of universities were involved. Unfortunately, I have to say that the problems we were facing 6–7 years ago are still there. It is still unclear what is going to happen with the pension system in the future. Will it generate enough funds to pay out the pensions to a younger generation? It’s a problem that concerns not only Latvia, but also Poland and other countries. That’s why we have also discussed this issue with my colleagues here at the University of Gdańsk. This is an ongoing research and there are still more questions than answers. 

In what way did the war in Ukraine impacted like Latvia economically?

The war has influenced not only the economy, but everything. Inflation is currently very high. All across Europe we see the increase of the interest rates, which put pressure on private households with mortgage loans, as well as on companies complicating access to finance. 

Thank you for this conversation.

Thank you.