Still emerging: understanding Generative AI use in Higher Education

Abstract

As an emerging technology, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools are currently subject to constant re-inventions, and they may be employed in widely different ways by users. This study sought to develop understanding pertaining to the adoption of GAI tools on the basis of a cross-sectional survey conducted within a specific institutional context. It explored the following research question: “How do staff and students in an academic setting perceive their own responses to the specific emerging technology of Large Language Models?”. The study found that appropriate uses of GAI tools in the research setting were not straightforwardly obvious for participants. Variation was identified in both the use of GAI tools and in expertise on the part of staff, so that it would have been difficult for many staff participants to appreciate educationally appropriate uses of GAI tools and the extent to which students were manifesting those uses. While student respondents were more positive than staff about likely gains to be had from making use of these tools, and considered that facilitating conditions to support their use of GAI tools were in place, the main use that came consistently into view for students was to use GAI tools to improve language-usage and for text production. The findings suggest that more is needed than to frame the challenges posed by GAI tools for Higher Education across the world as a technical challenge for learning design or for training that addresses the AI literacy of students. The affordances of GAI tools play a key in determining their effective use. These affordances need to be imagined more adequately by both students and staff if this technology is to serve educational purposes effectively, with this imagination on the part of staff also needing to account for understanding of the ways that students themselves imagine the affordances of GAI tools.