Grace Allison
Research Mentor: Yulia Sevryugina
Mentor Department: Library, Other
Author(s): Yulia Sevryugina, Grace Allison
Session: Session 1 (9:00 AM – 9:50 AM)
Presentation Type: Poster 17
Abstract
Over recent years, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools have revolutionized the academic sphere. However, educators have yet to come to a consensus on if incorporating these tools into their curriculum is an effective way to enhance student learning. This project specifically focuses on the development of GenAI assisted assignments for chemistry. It sets out to determine whether GenAI tools that act as chat assistants are improving or hindering the overall student learning experience. This study utilizes survey data and text coding to recognize trends in student feedback after they are tasked to write a scientific essay and generate sources using AI chatbots. The results of this study show how students perceive drawbacks and benefits of GenAI. One prominent drawback that was identified is inaccuracy when generating references. It was found that 83.3% of student essays contained at least a few fabricated sources. This caused frustration among students with 66.7% expressing overall negative emotions when describing their experiences generating references with AI tools. However, students have also found that GenAI tools increase their ability to process data, with 81.0% of students reporting GenAI helped them understand and summarize information. After this assignment, 57.7% of students said they plan to use GenAI tools in the future showing how education must pivot to accommodate this technological revolution. Overall, GenAI tools have the potential to completely reimagine the way education is approached and this study contributes to ensuring student voice is considered when designing ways to incorporate these new technologies.
