By Marc Ramsingh
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our lives, and its use in college work is a topic that has been gaining attention. AI can be used to enhance the learning experience, improve student outcomes, and streamline administrative tasks. One of the most significant benefits of using AI in college work is that it can help students learn more effectively. With AI-powered tools like chatbots and virtual assistants, students can get instant feedback on their work and access personalized learning resources. This can help them stay engaged in their studies and improve their academic performance.
It is time for colleges to embrace this technology and incorporate it into their curriculum.
While this certainly sounds convincing, the above paragraph was written by an AI I prompted on “The use of AI in college works”.
The use of AI writers in higher education has been in debate since the birth of commercially available AI, however, the argument has surged alongside the massive advancements from AI such as “ChatGPT”. These advancements worry professors, who argue that the use of AI will diminish student learning; it excites students, who believe that with changing times the way we approach homework and essays should change too.
It’s clear AI isn’t going anywhere so it’s important to find a middle ground, especially regarding collegiate work.
What’s the sentiment of students and professors?
There are a couple of stances spread across students and professors.
According to a survey done by BestColleges, 32% of students have used AI tools for a class. This number is expected to grow; as a widely available competent, AI is extremely new and young. The remaining 57% of students said that they haven’t used AI tools for classwork — this isn’t surprising as it takes time for tools of such to gain traction with a majority of the student population as well as university regulations to take place on AI tools first. The remaining 11% had no response to the question.
Professors are spilt in their approach to AI tools in their classes.
In my personal experience, I am in a business class in the spring semester; our professor told us that the use of AI tools like ChatGPT is prohibited and will detect if AI is used. This brings us to the first group of professors who believe that the use of AI tools is cheating and academic dishonesty.
51% of professors have prohibited the use of AI tools in their syllabus and 60% of professors have addressed how they use AI tools in their syllabus. With the newness of these tools, we can expect these numbers to go up and for university regulation to step in at some point in the midterm future. The rest of surveyed professors, 49% of them, believe in AI’s use in classwork. It’s not clear how much this figure would increase, but I would expect it to generally increase when university regulation makes its stance on the matter first.
What are the future implications of AI at a university level?
The future of tools like AI is questionable. The unlikely event is that AI tools would be banned outright via university regulation. Another more likely scenario is that universities recognize you can’t get rid of growing AI tools and the best way to handle it is to regulate it by allowing its use, not abuse, by students.
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