Written by: Sienna Day
Nearly one year ago, ChatGPT was released to the public, making artificial intelligence (AI) more easily available and popular among students. Although AI can be used as a tool to enhance learning, educators have encountered students using AI to cheat or avoid doing assignments altogether. At Southern Adventist University, the rise of AI has forced Southern professors to adapt and adjust their courses.
Corneliu Rusu, a professor in the School of Social Work, spoke with the Accent about his experience with AI in the classroom.
“Last semester was just very destabilizing,” Rusu said. “I can’t rely on [tools like Turnitin] to identify who is using AI and who is not using AI. So I said, ‘If I can’t do that, I will teach students how to use AI in an ethical way.’”
Rusu explained how AI can benefit a student’s education.
“You can engage in a beautiful, deep, meaningful and informative conversation … with AI. You can bounce off ideas. It can give you perspectives, make suggestions, check your ideas, evaluate your ideas — it can do a lot. It’s like you are talking with a tutor,” Rusu said.
Although AI can be an effective tool, Rusu explains that detecting improper use and preventing cheating has proved to be a challenge for professors since the resource is still fairly new to the public.
“At this point, I had to change all my assignments,” he said. “Not that there is a way to totally avoid AI use, but I’m trying to make it a little bit more difficult … in the sense that it requires higher thinking skills and application.”
When asked if a lot of students have been using AI to cheat, Rusu said, “Yes. The problem is that when students are stressed … they end up cutting corners. I do see this as a problem. I’m all [for] advocating for AI, but I think that many people are just using it in the wrong way. [They] are replacing learning, not enhancing learning.”
In response to AI use on campus, Southern professors have inserted a new AI statement into their class syllabi.
This syllabus insert opens with, “As an institution committed to the Christian values of honesty and integrity, each student is expected to take responsibility for all work they produce and to abide by the University’s standards for academic integrity.”
Improper AI use is specifically addressed in the statement’s closing sentence: “This includes plagiarism from other students, professional paper writers, and artificial intelligence chat programs.”
Gus Martin, director of Online Campus, highlighted in an interview with the Accent the best practices to follow when using AI for learning.
“Use AI programs as smart search engines that present information in ways that are easy to understand … for clarification or explanations when you need help and [to] generate ideas, topics and writing prompts,” Martin said.
Martin advises students to always fact check and research plagiarism issues before using AI text or images. He also encourages students not to use AI programs as a way to avoid doing their own work.
Martin added that if a professor allows students to use AI text or images in their assignments, the students should use proper attribution and explain how they used AI for the assignment.