Posted on by craymond

End of Term Thoughts: AI

The first in maybe a few brief reflections on the recently completed semester and my twenty-fifth year of teaching as a full-time professor:

I ran a simple anonymous online survey of < 50 undergraduates on their use of AI. About two-thirds of the survey respondents indicated that they use AI only rarely if at all.

I have used AI on a recent assignment in this course.
Frequency with which I use AI for exams/assignments in my university courses.

I’ve come up with four possible explanations for my results:

  1. Students didn’t answer truthfully even though the survey was online and anonymous.
  2. Students don’t consider many of the tools they are using (e.g., Grammarly) to be AI.
  3. My sample is very unrepresentative, even though the responses came from students in English, political science, psychology, and communications courses.
  4. Students aren’t using AI nearly as much as we think they are.

I have the most doubts about #4.