Artificial Intelligence & Students: The Future Of Education

The educational field is going through a transformation that affects educators and students. Despite the initial backlash against artificial intelligence products, schools, colleges, and universities widely adopt these solutions to help with daily work. They handle appointments and provide information on scholarships and applications.

Learners have also found more productive applications for such products. The times of students using AI to write papers and essays are slowly fading away as they uncover the benefits of this technology. Our latest article is about how learners work with AI-based tools, the benefits of these solutions in the educational process, and what educators have to say about this technology.

Latest Statistics On Students Using AI

The number of learners working with AI-based tools is continuously growing. In November 2023, 35% of college learners used these solutions to help with their studies. According to a McGraw Hill survey, which interviewed 500 undergraduates and 200 college educators, 62% of students claimed AI to be a valuable learning tool rather than a hazard.

Another research conducted by BestColleges.com shed more light on the rising use of these products among learners. The survey, which had 1,000 participants among graduate and undergraduate students, demonstrated that 56% used AI to pass exams or assignments.

Even in 2023, educators tasked students with using such solutions for academic tasks. According to the survey, 53% of respondents had assignments explicitly requiring using artificial intelligence tools. 8 in 10 learners said that instructors explained how to work with these solutions properly. Here’s what BestColleges.com has uncovered:

• In their work, 50% of Gen Z and 60% of Millennial students used AI tools.
• 64% of men and 48% of women used solutions like ChatGPT.
• Business majors have the highest number of AI users, with 62% of students surveyed.
• 51% percent of instructors considered using these tools to complete exams and assignments as plagiarism and cheating.

What Do Students Use AI For?

Regarding artificial intelligence and students, each learner has found unique ways of enhancing their daily academic work. They demonstrate a new approach to this technology among higher education institutions. Here’s how students use AI in their daily work.

1. Brainstorming Ideas

It’s not uncommon for learners to get stuck on particular assignments and group tasks. They may have trouble finding a suitable essay topic, group assignment ideas, or organizing their work. AI tools help speed up this process and overcome writer’s block. 

These solutions can develop various essay ideas, document structures, and other aspects of academic tasks. This approach is more productive than past cases of students using AI to write papers for them. Having several ideas and draft structures on hand helps finish assignments faster and receive higher grades.

2. Enhancing Subject Comprehension

Students can’t always understand each notion, especially when exploring a new subject. Platforms like Perplexity.AI explain phenomena and concepts clearly and concisely. Since they work in the same manner as AI chatbots, learners can ask for sources or additional materials. According to Quizlet, 67% of students find learning more efficient thanks to AI technology.

These solutions also break down complex concepts, showing how their components connect. Even if the tools have trouble explaining things, they can be programmed to redirect students to appropriate professors. This feature of modern artificial intelligence solutions improves student comprehension and makes it easier for them to learn.

3. Information Gathering

Modern AI solutions offer instant access to various types of data. With tools like ChatGPT, learners can research topics quickly, find relevant sources, and organize their findings. These factors let students use AI products to gather all necessary information faster, reducing time spent on assignments.

With products developed for educational institutions, college attendants tap into information about various aspects of academic life. For example, to locate contact information and available hours for college professors, class schedules, campus facilities, and libraries. This results in faster service for students and lower costs for the institutions.

4. Mental Health Support

Learners can experience frustration with their academic pursuits. If left unchecked, the feelings of stress and anxiety can turn into severe conditions. Most colleges have mental health counselors who help individuals deal with negative emotions and balance their personal and academic lives.

AI-based products help students when these professionals are unavailable, as they work 24/7. These solutions offer support when individuals are burned out or depressed, helping them cope with stress through mental well-being exercises and advice. If this isn't enough, AI tools notify appropriate staff about overanxious students.

5. Personalized Learning

Each student has their style and preferences when it comes to learning. Some do fine with memorizing text, while others need visual and audio aids to understand the study content better. Modern AI solutions offer a straightforward way for individuals to create unique learning paths. 47% of learners claim AI had a positive effect on their learning experience.

Products based on this technology deliver text, speech, and even video information. This approach to education has already demonstrated significant results among higher education institutions. According to McKinsey & Company, personalized education offered by AI can bridge the gap between low and high-achieving students by up to 20%.

6. Proofreading Assignments

This is the second most popular use case for AI tools after making drafts and outlines for different written assignments. Much like Grammarly and the Google Docs tool, many platforms built on artificial intelligence can proofread college assignments for grammatical and spelling mistakes.

However, the capacities of AI solutions go far beyond these standard features. These tools can check the correct use of voice, formal and informal language, punctuation, academic citation styles, and other things that influence the final grade. Even ChatGPT performs these actions with the right prompts.

7. Tutoring Assistance

In addition to finding and learning information, students require a foolproof way to retain it. Otherwise, they can forget crucial data during exams or quizzes. Modern AI-enhanced chatbots serve as tutors that keep learners on their toes and refresh their memory with test exams and flash quizzes. A study by Cryptopolitan shows that 68% of respondents improved their grades thanks to this technology.

Students can use their generative capabilities to brush up on the structure of the central nervous system, financial law, organic chemistry compounds, and other subjects from desktops or smart devices. People even use the likes of ChatGPT to polish their understanding of foreign languages.

What Educators Think About Students Using AI

Unlike students who welcomed generative AI solutions with open arms, educators weren’t so eager about them. Most instructors believed the products were a form of cheating and actively used AI detection tools to deal with generated works. But what does the situation look like after the initial heated discussions have cooled down?

An extensive study by Forbes shows that the attitude toward this technology changes at lightning speed. Of 500 participants, 65% claimed that using this technology improved educational outcomes, with 18% believing it hurt the learning process. 60% of educators already use AI-based software to teach students.

Teachers under 26 are most eager to introduce artificial intelligence to students among the surveyed demographics. AI-powered educational games are the most popular solutions used by 51% of instructors. Other popular solutions include adaptive learning platforms and automated grading systems. 43% and 41% of teachers use them accordingly.

Biggest Concerns Educators Have About The Use Of AI

Despite the broader adoption of these solutions, educators have several concerns about them.

• Cheating. The issue of academic dishonesty remains one of the most pressing for instructors.  In addition to students using AI to write papers, they can also make the solutions mimic their language and tone. This leaves the possibility of cheating on assignments wide open.
• Data accuracy. College and university professors express concern about the quality of information students get from general-use platforms. This data can be outdated or false, damaging the education process as learners often fail to double-check facts provided by ChatGPT and similar applications.
• Equal access to AI tools. Many instructors are concerned that not all students can work with these solutions. This can create a gap between those with access to AI and those without one. Students from low-income demographics are potentially the most affected by this problem.
• Job displacement. Like all professionals, educators fear losing their jobs to automation and AI in particular. This causes a lot of concerns about displacement, retraining, and effective integration of AI tools without the technology becoming a substitute for real education.
• Reduced human engagement. Another concern for many education providers is the decreased involvement of humans in the educational process. While AI tools show excellent results in working with information, they lack the human touch and understanding, which can take the spark out of learning.

Conclusion

Modern AI solutions aren’t tools for mindless copypasting. These products are transforming the education sphere, and the results couldn’t be more exciting. Educators must teach students how to do this properly instead of discouraging them from using these tools. Then, AI will become a vital part of the learning process.