The College of Business has published the results from its multidisciplinary study on AI usage among UCA students.
The study found that 7.34% of students reported using AI services such as ChatGPT for classwork.
According to professors Alexander Chen, Tracy Suter and Jim Downey, who directed the study, this percentage is expected to only increase in the coming years.
“There is just going to be a plethora of options,” Suter said. “So I think that more people are going to experiment with it.”
“I think it’s clear to me that this year, the use of AI by students here at UCA has gone up,” Downey said. “I think that next year, it’ll be even higher.”
This graph shows the frequency of survey respondents' AI use. Alexander Chen, one of the conductors of the study, said he hopes to continue researching and promoting AI use.
All three professors are looking to encourage the use of AI in academic settings.
“We have to figure out as administrators and faculty the best ways to integrate AI into learning for our students,” Downey said.
“I see it as a tool that might help me explore things that I hadn’t considered,” Suter said. “But anytime we begin to think of something as a replacement as opposed to a compliment, that’s when we get into dangerous territory.”
The study also discovered several trends in AI usage.
“We found out how comfortable people were with computers,” Chen said. “[We found out] that it had something to do with the social influence of your colleagues.”
Chen said that males were also more likely to use AI compared with other genders.
The study used two models to collect data on UCA students’ AI usage; the technology acceptance model measured how comfortable students were with using computers and AI, and the social cognitive theory measured how much social interactions influenced students’ usage of AI.
Undergraduate economics major Iffah Ather served as a research assistant for the study.
“I had a very keen interest in data analysis, and I approached Dr. Chen and asked him if I could be a part of the research,” Ather said.
“I thought it was a great idea because it’s definitely something that is improving nowadays,” Ather said. “It’s a big topic of discussion as well.”
Ather is a proponent of AI usage among students at UCA.
“There’s obviously right ways to use AI and faculty is a great way to ask for help in order to figure out how to use AI appropriately,” Ather said.
Chen said he hopes to further research and promote the use of AI to give UCA students an advantage in the job market.
“In the future, a lot of people believe that they are going to be replaced by AI,” Chen said. “I would like to see a student use AI more effectively so they will not be replaced and they can be more productive.”
“That is really what we should promote because, in the labor force, you are going to see a lot of changes in the future,” he said.
Chen said he wants more undergraduates to study AI usage, too.
