Written by Brinda Patel
correspondent
The integration of artificial intelligence in higher education is evolving at a rapid pace, creating a variety of opportunities. Deliver personalized content that resonates with individual users in milliseconds. Questions have arisen about academic integrity and accountability for students and faculty at the College of New Jersey.
In 2022, AI tools like Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer will become more prevalent in classrooms from middle school to college as an alternative way to break down complex academic materials. ChatGPT can generate anything from bullet points to essays that can be translated into any language.
In an Oct. 2 email to the university, Vice President for Operations Sharon Blanton announced that students and faculty have been granted secure access to Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Google NotebookLM. He said in an email that “students should be mindful of course policies and instructor expectations” when using AI tools, and that students must follow the university's academic integrity guidelines and information security policies.
Raquel Sosa, a professor of psychology, said students vary in how they use AI. Sosa has learned more about AI through professional development at university events.
“AI has advantages and disadvantages for student learning,” Sosa said. “I think it would be helpful for students to understand how to evaluate the output from AI in an ethical way and understand the ethical implications of using AI.”
Noel Zabatelli, a senior psychology major, shared an opposing view on the impact of AI.
Zabatelli is in charge of public relations for the university's Harry Potter fan club, the Order of the Nose-Bite Teacup. She uses AI to pre-plan the content of her meetings and knows that her future career as a therapist will include conversational technology to some degree.
“I think students are relying too much on AI,” Zabatelli said. “Instead of an academic tool for advancement, it has become something people use to cheat. It encourages us not to use our brains to their full potential, and it has negative effects over time.”
The World Economic Forum revealed in a 2023 Walton Family Foundation survey that 71% of teachers and 65% of students mutually agreed that AI is essential to student success both in college and the workplace. The organization says the next five years will be critical in shaping the transformation of AI tools that will be essential for students to succeed in university and the workplace. It also addresses teacher burnout and workload stress by using neural network knowledge tracking to provide data-driven feedback to students as they teach.
Abby Smith, an intermediate management major, has also noticed an increased reliance on AI in the classroom. Smith uses ChatGPT to understand complex lessons by generating easy-to-read flashcards and links to YouTube videos that help explain specific topics in more detail than the textbook. But she says it's also been a “blessing and a curse.”
“The downside to this is that it feels like you can't study without loading all your notes into ChatGPT,” says Smith. “I feel that my attention span and patience are very short, so I would like to have a tool to do all the work and use it to study. Because of AI, people are becoming more and more lazy and dependent on technology.”
Business professor Mark Talaro said the use of AI will depend on how students decide to utilize it. When students ask an AI to answer simple questions about an article to complete their homework, it becomes a hindrance and leads to over-reliance.
“Companies value employees who can work together to solve complex problems, and even more, they want employees who can do it within a high-functioning team of colleagues,” Talaro said. “AI can't do either of those things.”
The university's Academic Integrity Violations webpage includes a 2024 advisory that states AI can be used responsibly to “check spelling and grammar, suggest brainstorming notes for paper topics, and create study guides.” However, if the paper is generated by AI rather than the student writing it themselves, academic work becomes a “violation.” Professors are now including sections on AI and its acceptable uses in their syllabuses.
The University's Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning has included additional resources on the current state and future of AI on its Artificial Intelligence page to help professors focus on AI in their classrooms.
