Niche Session: Students’ Use of AI
Speakers: Amber Buck and Amy Dayton (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa)
This panel featured four speakers who presented three different papers that explored various ongoing research on text-generating technologies, students’ current perceptions of AI, how they engage with it in their writing, and instructors’ stances on AI in the writing classroom. For one of the papers, titled “Students’ Use of AI,” a work in progress by Amber Buck and Amy Dayton, Professors at the University of Alabama, the main focus of their research is to directly engage students, understanding how they navigate the presence of these artificial intelligence technologies in their writing process.
The panel began with Dr. Amber Buck giving a brief introduction and overview of the project’s goal. Dr. Amy Dayton contributed to the introduction with a slide that includes various current news articles and conversations about AI and writing published by The New York Times and New York Magazine, about students’ perceptions of AI in the classroom.
Recruiting participants for their research, Amber Buck and Amy Dayton sent out 2,000 invitations through the University. 48 persons took the survey, with 15 interviewees (8 men and 7 women, 13 white/non-hispanic, 1 African American, 1 Asian American. The participants’ data also shows they were 2 first-years, 5 sophomores, 4 juniors, and 4 seniors. The majors of these participants are Communications or Comms Disorder (3), Finance/Advertising (2), Biology (1), MIS/Computer Science (4), Engineering (2), Education (1), and Public Health (1).
Presenting on the results from their research, they share that 48.78% (20 persons) answered to using the technology regularly, more than once a week. 31.71% (13 persons) noted that they use the technology occasionally (more than once per month), 4.88% (2 persons) stated that they rarely use the technology (a few times per year or less), and 7.32% stated that they have tried to use the technology once or twice. 4.88% (2 persons) said that although they are familiar with the technology, they have not used it, while 2.44% (1 person) said they were not familiar with the technology.
Going further in their study, they asked students about their use of AI in their writing process. Their research results show that 30.26% said they use AI because they need help understanding an assignment or topic. 28.9% of them only use AI when they want to improve or revise their existing draft. 13.16% said they use AI when they are stuck or are running out of time. 6.58% said they engage AI when they do not see the value of a task or assignment. 14.47% said they use AI because they feel the technology could produce a better result than they could. 1.32% said they use AI for other reasons, and 5.26% said they don’t consult AI for any academic tasks.
To help them better analyze the responses from their survey and interviews, they stated that they had to use a grounded theory methodology. Through this methodology, they identified intriguing points that help to deepen their understanding of the collected data. Using this approach, their research identified that students use AI for:
- Understanding the task/prompt
- Reading comprehension
- Brainstorming or generating new ideas
- Drafting or revising their written work
- Patchwriting purposes
- Soliciting critiques of their work
- Editing their sentences.
To contextualize their research, the panelists turned to Stacey Pigg’s work, “Research writing with ChatGPT: A descriptive embodied practice framework,” whose research identified that “students are turning to ChatGPT when they are experiencing struggles and difficulties that are invisible to faculty members.” Another argument their presentation highlights is that students’ turn towards AI and their feelings towards the technology are tied to their sense of writing efficacy and their sense of identity as writers. This argument is backed up by the comments from one of their interviewees, a Public Health student who said, “I enjoy like writing in general, I feel like I’m pretty decent at it. So I think that’s why I probably don’t use AI as much because I feel like I trust myself more so than using something else.”
Another key thing they presented from their research is the metaphors students are using to associate with AI. Some gave it the term “Brain” while others said it is a “human-like helper.” Some other students gave it the metaphor of a weapon or tool of violence. Others gave AI the metaphor of a genie. Exploring the ethical side of AI, their presentation shows that some of the students noted that using AI for writing-related tasks is cheating, however a “weird form of cheating.”
Concluding their presentation on this research, which set off to understand how students are interacting with AI and what their perception is, the presenters came to some conclusions. They note that while AI has become prevalent, there is widespread use, but without much direction.
This research, presented by Buck and Dayton, provides detailed insights into how students are currently interacting with the device and what their perceptions about it are. It also raises important questions, especially looking at some of the case scenarios they highlighted, that cause students to use AI. Some important questions that arose during the Q&A session are: how do instructors bridge the gap? And what are the barriers that cause students to rather consult AI than go for office hours? Essentially, this presentation, along with the other individual presentations by Joseph Robertshaw and Morgan Banville, left participants with important insights and questions to sit with and reflect on while designing their classes each semester and approaching AI in their writing classroom.