In April 2024, Academic Technology Support Services (ATSS) conducted focus group sessions with UMN instructors. The sessions’ goals were to:
- understand instructors’ level of awareness about generative AI.
- understand how instructors perceive acceptable use of generative AI for their academic courses.
- learn how instructors would like to be involved with shaping how generative AI is used in education and what support, if any, instructors desired around the use of generative AI.
Note: throughout this post, ‘generative AI’ and ‘AI’ are both used to refer to the broad category of artificial intelligence that can produce content such as text, images, video, audio, and/or code.
Focus group process
ATSS partners with Usability Services to establish the session goals, determine participant recruiting criteria, craft the interview protocol, and set the ground rules for the focus group sessions. During the sessions, the project team takes notes and documents their observations, including direct quotes.
Following each session, the team shares their impressions while a facilitator helps elevate prominent issues. In this study, we focused on issues that had implications for instructors engaging in generative AI.
After all sessions were completed, we gathered with Tony Warner, a User Experience Analyst. With Tony's guidance, we reexamined the issues in light of how they might inform strategies, policies, and student involvement around the use of generative AI.
Key Findings
The findings and instructor quotes in this section are excerpts from the focus group summary report, created by Tony Warner.
Finding #1: Instructors who are less familiar with generative AI are apprehensive about using it in their courses. Instructors who are familiar with generative AI are favorable about considering using it in their courses.
Two comments illustrate the varied levels of generative AI experience and comfort across the focus group participants. One instructor reflected, “It's a complex feeling. But I would say my personal attitude is I want to embrace it more rather than worry about it because I think it can be a tool to assist our learning if used properly.” A second instructor seemed quite comfortable with AI and commented,“I've used it in my research. I've used it in my writing. I've attended a number of training workshops through the center for writing here on campus about teaching with AI as well.”
Finding #2: Equity between students is a concern when the same tools are not available to all students.
As the number of available AI tools rapidly increases, instructors are concerned about equity– including cost, quality, availability across colleges and system campuses, security and privacy. They note that paid versions of tools often perform better. One instructor stated that “I want all of our students to have access to the best AI tools that are out there so that everybody is working from the same common level.” Another instructor shared that “it's a fundamental equity and access issue. I think that there should be more training opportunities for faculty who are interested in integrating AI into their own research as well as into their teaching. I think the university will be stronger on both its research and teaching missions if those training exercises are out there, and they should be widely available and there should be worked examples in these things so that faculty can really get in there and start doing this stuff.”
Finding #3: There is a desire for clear communication from leadership for UMN instructors in terms of generative AI tools to use/not use, why they should/should not be used, and current investigations.
Because generative AI is such a new area, instructors are looking for guidance in navigating its use. An instructor noted, “[W]e don't have much guidance for the students….You can declare you prevent usage of AI or you welcome it in your course description when we set up the Canvas page.” Another instructor shared their department’s use of AI: “[W]e generated a statement for graduate students in the use of AI tools for their written exam. And it basically boils down to you're allowed to use them. You just have to let us know if you're using it. Because anything beyond that is too hard to regulate and police. And these tools are here now and we need our students to know how to use them.”
Finding #4: Plagiarism and academic integrity around use of generative AI is a major concern of faculty, and many are not sure how to deal with it in the courses they teach.
Some instructors acknowledged that they are in the early stages of AI tool exploration. One instructor found that “...generative AI gives you a different answer each time. [I]f you don't give it more prompts like write it in two sentences or in three sentences, if you just kind of take my question and put it through generative AI, there's a particular structure that AI likes to adhere to. So that was helpful in me crafting and thinking about what my AI policy should be in my classroom.” Another instructor suggested taking an education-first approach with students suspected of using AI inappropriately: “Start responding early in that conversational mode before escalating to a disciplinary action.”
Next steps
ATSS shares our user research results with the UMN community through blog posts, web articles, and presentations. We welcome collaboration on this topic with community members.
Resources
- Artificial Intelligence: Appropriate Use of Generative AI Tools
- Chat GPT UMN syllabus statements
- ChatGPT and other AI tools
- UMN students' perspectives on Generative AI: November 2023 focus groups results
Contributors
Jennifer Englund, Annette McNamara, and Tony Warner contributed to the creation and writing of this post.
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