In November 2023, Academic Technology Support Services (ATSS) conducted focus group sessions with University of Minnesota (UMN) undergraduate and graduate students. The goals of the sessions were to:
- understand students’ level of awareness about Generative AI,
- understand how students perceive the acceptable use of Generative AI for their academic courses, and
- learn how, if at all, students would like to be involved with shaping how Generative AI is used in education and shaping policies.
Process
In partnership with the Office of Information Technology (OIT) Usability Services team, ATSS team members:
- established the project goals
- determined recruiting criteria for participants and
- defined discussion points to drive the conversations.
During the focus group sessions, the project team served as observers and documented their observations. After all sessions had been completed the team reviewed the issues and analyzed them to determine how they might inform strategies, policies, and student involvement around the use of Generative AI.
Key Findings
The findings and student quotes in this section are excerpted from the focus group summary report, created by User Experience Analyst Tony Warner.
Students are concerned that the use of GenAI will cause them to lose critical skills.
Focus group participants expressed concern that people will not learn critical thinking skills due to relying on AI to do too many tasks, such as writing. One student shared that "I feel like [AI] has eliminated the need to be a proficient writer. That skill doesn't just affect your writing abilities but your overall intelligence. Learning to write is important to learning to think critically." Another student shared a similar writing concern, in that "We could just have everyone use AI to write all of their papers…” and then wondered “...but then why are we writing the paper to begin with?" A student voiced concern about relying on AI for skills because "...as you move forward in your career, you may not have those skills if you use AI to do too many things."
Students shared misinformation about UMN GenAI policy and inconsistent messaging about acceptable use in courses.
Several participants thought they had been told University-wide policies about the use of AI in courses, but these do not yet exist. Some participants had a good grasp on how AI should or should not be used in their courses, but that was due to their specific instructors going over those policies with the class and/or including them in the syllabus. One participant shared that "...one of my professors last semester let us use Chat GPT for anything as long as we cited it as a source. I was surprised because there were a lot of things being sent out by the University about not using it or you can only use it with your professor's permission. I thought this was a good move, because people were going to use it anyway." Another participant noted that "...one of my professors added a section to the syllabus halfway through the semester about the use of AI. They said the use of AI or similar tools would not be acceptable in any graded assignment. They did specify that you could use those tools for research or to prep for an exam, but there was an expectation to cite AI when it is used."Several participants said that policy around AI usage needs to be set by the department or major due to how differently AI can be used in different disciplines. They also wanted to see more conversations about AI use in their classes, in that "...policies should be class dependent, and there should be a discussion at the start of a class about using AI in that class." A participant stated that "...we need clear outlines of how and when it's alright to use AI in a course, instead of professors not mentioning it at all."
Feelings around GenAI are mixed: some students see it in a positive light, some are concerned. This applies to both academic courses and the workplace.
This includes worries about cheating, being replaced in their job, and AI being biased against certain groups (i.e. gendered or racist). A participant stated that "...because AI coding is made by biased humans, a lot of times that bias will show up in how the AI responds."Several participants called out the use of AI to write any amount of content as cheating, but they thought it was acceptable to use it for mundane tasks such as spell check or to improve formatting. One participant noted that "some simpler tasks are good for AI, such as spell check, so you can focus on the content of your writing instead of all the little things."
Several participants expressed positive feedback about how AI may be able to help professors keep their materials and technologies up to date in the courses they teach and noted that "it can be great for finding sources. Even for professors; I took a class where the professor was using really old sources, and it made the class boring. They were using sources that were written in the 70's, my parents were born in the 70's, it's kinda out of date now. AI could help professors stay up to date in an efficient way."
Students want their perspectives to be included when considering the future of GenAI in academia.
Students recognize that AI is a part of the world, and they want their perspectives to be included when considering the future of AI in academia. One participant stressed that "...getting student perspectives is important because we are the future; we're the future professors, we're the future everything, and getting our opinion now will give a better idea of how things are going to change over time. Our generation is feeling really positive about AI, but maybe the students currently in middle school may not feel positive about the future of AI."Some participants felt they wouldn’t be heard because they’re students and some professors are too set in their ways. One participant felt that some of their professors "...don't care what [students] think because I've been a tenured professor for 20 years, and only my opinion matters."
Next steps
ATSS team members will be sharing the focus group results with the UMN community through presentations. We welcome collaboration on this topic with members of the UMN community.
Resources
The image used in this post was generated by Adode Firefly using the prompt "online meeting with students of various ages using laptops and earbuds, working from home."
Contributors
Jennifer Englund, Annette McNamara, and Tony Warner contributed to the creation and writing of this post.