COLUMBIA, Ky. – Few topics are more divisive in higher education than the role of artificial intelligence in the academy.
That’s what led three Lindsey Wilson College professors to study the role AI might play to increase and enhance student learning.
“In talking to students, especially international students, they say, ‘We use it, but we use it to try to do better,’” said Helen MacLennan, who is a professor and dean of the Lindsey Wilson School of Graduate Business and Technology.
Along with fellow Lindsey Wilson business and technology professors Hermano De Queiroz and Charles Malka, MacLennan surveyed 157 students to better understand how they use AI in their work. De Queiroz and MacLennan presented their findings at the Society for Advancement of Management national conference, held in March in Tallahassee, Florida.
“Research has shown and students are saying, ‘We need AI in our career, and if you’re not teaching it to us in schools, you’re not preparing us for our jobs in the real world,’ because it’s infiltrated every industry,” said MacLennan.
MacLennan said that suggests that professors can teach students how to use AI responsibly, which might also entail changing the ways some subjects and topics are taught.
“We can use it responsibly to help students do their job, not just do their work for them,” she said. “Then the question becomes, ‘How do we change the assignments so that students can use it and still learn?’ We don’t want it to do the work for them. We want it to be a tool.”
Since their first round of research, more than 300 additional students have responded to their survey, which MacLennan said will give her and her colleagues opportunities to examine AI’s role in learning in greater depth, such as whether there are gender differences in how AI is employed.
MacLennan said she also sees the research as a possible springboard to creating a more refined AI policy in the college’s School of Graduate Business and Technology.
“I think this can provide some guardrails for the ethical use of AI in the classroom,” she said. “No matter how much we might wish, AI is not going away. Students are going to use it, so we have to stay a step ahead, and maybe that means adjusting our curriculum to accommodate their expectations.”
PHOTO – Hermano De Queiroz and Helen MacLennan presented research on how college students use artificial intelligence at the national meeting of the Society for Advancement of Management, held in March in Tallahassee, Florida.
PHOTO – Hermano De Queiroz and Helen MacLennan present research on how college students use artificial intelligence at the national meeting of the Society for Advancement of Management, held in March in Tallahassee, Florida.
(Duane Bonifer – Lindsey Wilson College)