"I have felt skeptical of my professors' skepticism towards AI. It's kinda like in elementary school or middle school where they said 'you need to know these numbers because you won't have a calculator in your pocket at all times' and I was like 'dead wrong, I do have a calculator in my pocket on my phone at all times.'"
Participant in student focus group, November 2024
In November 2024, Academic Technology Support Services, in collaboration with academic technology professionals across the University of Minnesota system, convened student focus groups and asked about their use of generative AI technology. Focus group participants included students from multiple system campuses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
The goal was to learn when and why students use generative AI in their classes. Toward that end, we asked students:
- What do you consider when deciding whether or not to use AI for an assignment or to support your learning in the course?
- Where is the line between using AI appropriately and using it inappropriately?
- Have you ever used AI instead of approaching your instructor with questions?
- What skills do you feel you have developed or improved through the use of generative AI? What skills have been negatively impacted?
- In what ways has generative AI changed the way you approach learning and completing assignments?
The focus groups yielded many actionable takeaways, but we’d like to call out one. Students told us that if instructors don’t provide guidelines about using generative AI, students create their own rules about appropriate use. Moreover, they indicated that if their instructors simply ban the use of generative AI without engaging in nuanced discussion about the ban, they are likely to dismiss the directive as uninformed.
The implications are clear: your course needs a nuanced AI policy to account for specific assignments. Regardless of where you are on the continuum of generative AI use, consider the following and be prepared to talk with your students:
- Learning takes effort. Students don’t always understand that learning results from time and effort. Using generative AI to shortcut effort may interfere with their ability to master the course learning outcomes instructors have purposefully planned for them.
- Use a process approach. When considering the role of generative AI in an assignment, instructors benefit from breaking down an assignment into its component parts and determining whether or not generative AI can be used for each step or key task, and why. The results can be refined into an assignment or course policy.
- Transparency is essential. Finally, communicate all of this explicitly and directly to your students. Use a syllabus statement that addresses the use of generative AI and engage in direct conversations throughout the course.
“There’s a lot of busy work in some classes, a lot of fluff, and you just think, ‘What does this have to do with my future or my eventual job?’ If it's just busy work, you just want to get it done. It’s about time management.”
Participant in student focus group, November 2024
The focus groups revealed that students are open to conversations with their instructors about the appropriate and inappropriate use of generative AI for coursework. Without thoughtful instructor guidance, students judge when to use AI based on their own assessment and assumptions about the value of the class activity or assignment relative to their time and effort. As novices, their ability to judge this may be poor. University students are adult learners. For any assigned task, adult learners want to know the “why,” and instructors need to be prepared to answer the “why” question directly.
Resources
To learn more about take-aways from the student focus groups, explore the slide deck: Things to know about when and why students use AI. Review the notes section for additional supporting resources.