Generative AI has become a key piece in education since 2022, with 86 per cent of students using AI in their studies.
Teachers at both high schools and universities are increasingly aware of students’ use of generative AI, with fears that it may be used to assist cheating.
ChatGPT, which is used by students the most, is an online chatbot that uses machine learning to quickly process and generate responses to enquiries.
This carries the most risk of cheating in an educational setting, however other AI systems pose less of a risk.
Source: Intelligent CIO
It is possible to simply ask ChatGPT to write a student’s essay, and it could have it done within seconds, so it’s cheating implications are obvious.
The Snapchat AI chatbot is largely a scaled down version of ChatGPT, however the remaining AI systems are largely learning assistant tools or creative aids.
Quillbot and Grammarly enhance the clarity and grammar of writing. They don’t generate original content, making them tools for refining existing work rather than facilitating cheating.
As for Dall-E and the Canva AI image generator; both are tools that generate images from written prompts.
The research shows that, more often than not, students are using Generative AI as a tool to enhance their work, not create it from scratch.
Source: Digital Education Council
The reason for this could simply be trust, with a study conducted by future campus indicating that most students don’t trust the information that AI provides.
Source: future campus
UOW PHD (Public Health) student, Zoe Power said the use of generative AI in tertiary education is conducting in various forms.
“I use it every day in various different forms…there’s lots of different programs I us,” she said.
“There’s a database search, so I type in a research question and instead of me having to search all these databases for my research proposal it collates it all for me which saves me hours of time.”
Miss Power said AI was now an important tool in education because it can be used in different ways.
“I think it’s important that it is used in the proper ways; I don’t think it should be used instead of your own critical thinking,” she said.
She believes AI will not replace student effort, but will enhance it.
