Read other stories in the “These Stories Were Not AI-Generated” special edition here.
The use of artificial intelligence is not only increasing among students, but also among professors.
In a 2025 College Board survey of more than 3,000 U.S. university faculty, more than three in four respondents reported experimenting with AI at work. This is despite the fact that 45% express a negative opinion about the use of AI in higher education, which is higher than the proportion expressing a positive opinion.
At the University of Florida, some students say there are benefits to using AI in the curriculum, but others believe technology should be separated from student assessment. Meanwhile, many teachers are already experimenting with the technology for curriculum, research, and grading.
Cody Tran, 19, a second-year chemistry student at the University of California, doesn’t think professors in his major need to use AI. In chemistry, grading is already done by faculty and research assistants, so AI is “not needed,” he said.
Cody added that teachers and students should be held to the same standards when it comes to AI.
“If you don’t think students should be made to do something, you should reflect that in your actions,” he says.
At the University of Florida, students must follow their specific course instructor’s AI policies. This is true for both generative AI and AI used as a feedback resource.
UF encourages the ethical use of AI by faculty in research and curriculum. With generative AI, professors need to be careful about the information they upload. According to UF’s AI governance policy, only public information must be input into the generative AI platform.
One professor has been working on AI at UF since before it became mainstream. Brian D. Avery, a senior lecturer in the university’s School of Sport Management, began implementing and developing AI in spring 2024. He currently chairs a group focused on AI within the department.
Avery has been working on advancing AI in a variety of ways, he said. One of his first applications was CogUniversity, a program that allows people to collaborate on developing AI solutions in facility management classes.
CogUniversity taught students how to use AI to create document search libraries, tools used to search, index, and retrieve important information. There, students could use documents to learn lesson content and ask questions of the AI.
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Not only did this improve the learning experience through collaboration, he said, but the questions students asked helped develop the chatbot’s thinking. Chatbots helped answer questions.
AI is part of “almost everything” Avery uses, he said. Examples include Adobe, Microsoft, and Canvas applications.
“This really helped me identify gaps in what I might have created and fill in those gaps,” Avery said.
Avery also uses Google NotebookLM, an AI platform that helps with research and note-taking. Last year, he was using Google NotebookLM when it shut down mid-way. The university said it concluded there was no proper screening by campus security.
“I immediately petitioned to have it reopened,” Avery said. “I made enough noise as soon as possible to get it back on and the review process was expedited.”
Although Avery is focused on developing AI, he emphasized the importance of using AI properly. He said that AI should enhance learning, not facilitate it, and that AI can only help users understand the questions they ask.
The report, based on conversations with nearly 74,000 people with email addresses in higher education, identified three areas where teachers commonly use AI: curriculum development, academic research, and grading.
57% of the conversations analyzed talked about the use of AI in assignment design and lesson planning, 13% of the conversations talked about the use of AI in academic research, and 7% of the conversations included the use of AI for grading.
Dorothy Leidner, a professor of business and AI ethics at the University of Virginia, said the greatest benefits come from using AI as a way to complement the way teachers teach and grade assignments.
Reidner said the AI doesn’t have favorite students, which eliminates bias in grading. AI also doesn’t get tired when grading large numbers of assignments, she added.
He said that while the use of AI is a perk for professors, it becomes a negative practice when teachers quit their jobs as instructors.
“I suppose [it] “As a teacher, your moral responsibility is to actually control the material and the experience your students have,” Leidner said.
Leidner has already begun experimenting with AI programs that have been approved for faculty use, she said. After posting her students’ grades on a particular assignment, she runs the students’ submissions through an AI grading system and compares her grading method to the artificial tool’s grading method.
“What was great was our consistency,” Leidner said. “I was really happy to see the tools getting so much better.”
Reidner plans to combine teaching assistants and AI grading in the fall semester, she said. This way, her teaching assistant can see if there are any major discrepancies in her grading compared to the AI’s grading method.
María José Pérez Molina, 21, a third-year anthropology student at the University of Florida, believes AI has both advantages and disadvantages. While it can be used as a useful study guide, generative AI isn’t all that useful, she said.
Regarding the use of AI for students and professors, Perez-Molina said there are different powers. Although she stands behind her views on generative AI, she believes it should be accessible to both students and professors in situations where AI enhances learning.
One of her professors was struggling to communicate in English and was using AI to translate his lectures.
“It would be translating the actual meaning rather than the literal words,” she said.
Mylyn Tran, 19, a sophomore math student at the University of Florida, doesn’t think AI is needed for grading.
“Especially in math, there are so many different ways to solve a problem,” she said. “I don’t think AI should be in charge of student grades.”
Please contact Leona Massangkay at lmasangkay@alligator.org. X Follow me at @leo_amasangkay.
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Leona is a second-year journalism major and the Spring 2025 University Administration Reporter. They previously worked as reporters in Santa Fe. In her free time, Leona enjoys going to the gym, watching Marvel movies, and traveling around the country for music festivals.
