According to a recent survey of nearly 4,000 college students across 16 different countries from the Digital Education Council (DEC), more than 85% of respondents said they used Artificial Intelligence in their studies.
Generative AI involves software systems trained on vast amounts of data to generate text, images, videos and other digital outputs. Examples would be ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and more.
A new “Generative AI Taskforce” at CWU sent out an email to the community in Sept. 2024 outlining benefits and potential risks and concerns of AI.The taskforce was formed last summer with members from across campus to provide guidance for faculty, students and staff about using AI. Among the concerns they highlighted were disclosing sensitive information, copyright, accuracy of information, bias, discrimination and ethical use of AI.
“Ethical use and transparency are crucial considerations,” the email read. “It is essential to ensure that generative AI is used responsibly and that the processes behind these technologies are transparent to users and stakeholders.” The email underscored an issue already on many people’s minds as school started back up this fall.
“[AI is a] tool, it’s just like anything else we use. If you are using it in the wrong place with the wrong intent, it’s not going to be great.” Chad Schone, director of the multimodal education center and universal design for learning at Central Washington University, said. “The worry for a lot of faculty is that AI is going to take away some of the very important tools that we use in order to help students become critical thinkers and masteries of different subjects, as well as creative thinkers, writers.”
“Here at the university we have trainings,” Dr. Sean Dahlin, associate sport management professor and sport and athletic administration program coordinator at CWU, said. “And a third of those sessions are on AI, and its use, and how to catch students using it.”
In the DEC study, 73% of students agreed that universities should be providing training for faculty on AI tools. 69% of students use AI to search for information, 42% use AI to check grammar, 33% use AI to summarize documents, and 24% use AI to come up with first drafts. Just under 30% of students think that AI is declining the quality of education.
Clara Crosby, a senior studying elementary education at CWU, expressed positive sentiments on the usage of AI., “I know sometimes it’s hard to get your thinking going for an assignment,” Crosby said. “Using it to find prompts and changing up to your wording is the same as reading an article and changing your wording. I think it can be helpful.” Crosby added that most of her professors have told her to “stay away” from AI.
“We have to worry a little bit more about plagiarism in different ways,” Dahlin said. “Are students just taking information from AI and calling it their own? What will plagiarism even maybe look like moving forward? I don’t know.”
Dahlin believed AI was going to be a consistent part of the future. “It’s not going away,” Dahlin said. “And I think it’s just going to continue to evolve to something that I can’t even probably comprehend. I know a lot of professors are worried about how it’s going to be policed, and I understand that.” Approximately 59% of students from the DEC Survey said they expect their universities to increase the use of AI in teaching and learning.
Experts say AI can be of use to students with disabilities. AI can translate text into speech for visually impaired students and interpret speech into text for hearing-impaired students, for example.“AI has a great, awesome enhancement for anyone who needs accessibility,” Schone said. “So students who have any disability whatsoever, AI is going to really change some of the things.”
