The supply of artificial intelligence has boomed in the last three to four years with the British government currently investing around two billion great British pounds into Artificial intelligence research. With this dramatic increase in supply of Ai, there has also been increased levels of exam malpractice through the use of Ai and arguably an increase in the use of students using Ai to aid, create, and write homework for them.
Using Ai in classes is a ‘slippery slope’ said one Old-Ashvillian when asked to comment. This is because students may begin by using Ai to turn in a last-minute assignment that they were unable to finish or turn in a homework that they forgot about. This leads to teaching staff marking work that is disadvantageous to the student because the student is not showing the true extent of their knowledge. It is also detrimental because the teacher is assigning the student correction work that requires the student to already have the knowledge shown in the homework. This means that the student, who the teacher believes to be operating at a reasonable standard, is going to struggle during the next homework or test as they have a gap in their knowledge. There is then a knock-on-effect as the student, who is not wanting to show this gap in their knowledge because they have used AI and do not want to be caught in their lie, is likely to use Ai again to fill this knowledge in.
From a teacher’s perspective it becomes nigh-on-impossible to track grades and give correct aid to the student so that they can improve and attain the better grades. If a student does not get caught using Ai, potential false grades will be sent home to the student’s carers. This ‘Pulls the wool over their carers eyes’ in essence carers will not see that the student is struggling and renders them unable to help the student from a carer’s side. It also leads the student into a false sense of security, in what grades that they are currently attaining, and making them believe that they can perform at the level their teachers believe they can with the current amount of work they are doing.
This ‘snowball effect’ can lead to multiple different issues: potential anxiety over upcoming exams, not knowing all the knowledge for the exams, being kicked out of exams for malpractice and students who may become upset on results day when they get sub-par grades and/or are unable to get into the things that they want to do post-school (for example: University courses, College courses or Apprenticeships).
I believe it is most beneficial to use Ai as a different search engine or when you need to find something targeted towards needing access to specific information. If you need to use Ai for schoolwork do not generate complete essays or sentences that you then copy and paste into your work, as this is plagiarism. You should use it to search and understand areas that you do not fully understand; This is better as students begin to learn through the use of Ai rather than cut corners. However, if you need to use Ai, please make sure it is clearly referenced as Ai and ensure that your teachers know that you used Ai.
Leave a Reply