Possibilities and challenges of Artificial Intelligence in the teaching and learning process of Journalism Writing. The experience in Spanish universities

Abstract

The research aims to assess the possibilities and challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) for the development of the teaching and learning of journalistic writing techniques in the university educational context. The main objective consists of analysing the abilities of AI to solve the composition of different journalistic texts¸ both informative and opinion, and the quality of the result, as well as other applications of AI in journalistic writing. The text tries to contribute to the knowledge on the use of AI by teachers and students in the teaching and learning process. A mixed methodology has been used to develop the research: on the one hand, descriptive and comparative, based on surveys to university professors in Spain specialised in this subject and to students taking related contents in their studies, also in this context; on the other hand, an experimental research is included among professors trained in the field of Journalistic Writing, who are asked for the qualified correction of an exam, anonymous, actually carried out with the AI system, ChatGPT. After weighing the results, each of them is interviewed in depth about the quality of the texts, their strengths, and weaknesses. The results show that AI is beginning to be used in the university context by students and professors. In the specific field of journalistic writing, its use for the moment is limited to assisting tasks in the writing process or suggesting topics, while the automatic generation of content is not widely accepted due to the ethical implications that it entails, especially those related to the originality of content. Teachers value the potential of this technology for writing simple and informative pieces but observe limitations at deeper levels of knowledge and in hybrid texts.