What do students want you to know about Generative AI? 

This was the most prevalent theme emerging from student responses, with a significant number of students expressing confusion and frustration about the lack of consistent guidelines on GenAI usage. Over 400 responses explicitly mentioned the need for clear guidelines or policies regarding GenAI use.  

“It would be excellent if UBC incorporated a SCHOOL-WIDE policy on AI. Half my classes permit AI in some cases, while others prohibit it. I know students would appreciate some clear and solid baseline rules on AI implementation so there is no inconsistencies between classes.” 

Students report this lack of clear guidelines has led to confusion and frustration, impacting their learning experience in negative ways.  

“The policies simply aren’t clear enough, and a lot of my personal uses for AI fall in a grey-area. e.g. using AI to grade my work against the marking criteria to look for points of improvement” 

Students shared their eagerness to learn about GenAI and its responsible use, requesting workshops, tutorials, and even dedicated courses. Over 300 students reported that structured learning opportunities would help them understand AI’s capabilities and limitations better.  

“Offer workshops for people to learn or strengthen their understanding of how to use AI tools effectively and appropriately. Integrate recommendations for how to use AI appropriately into more courses with examples applied to actual assignments.” 

Many of these requests asked specifically for training and guidance on using GenAI ethically and responsibly.   

“Workshops on how to use it ethically and how it could be used to help enhance learning but not replace learning/doing the work.” 

While others noted the importance of learning to how to critically evaluate AI-generated content to identify biases or verify accuracy.  

“This isn’t restricted to UBC but it would help if people understood what these tools are. At the core of it, it is just a statistical predictive model. Therefore, hallucinations and incorrect information are inevitable. I think people have too much inherent trust in the output, when the AI model is really just a predictor and has no inherent understanding of its own.” 

While some express reservations, students acknowledge GenAI’s potential benefits and advocate for integrating it into their learning process. Many students noted specific ways AI could benefit their learning, mentioning a broad range of applications including summarizing long readings, supporting research, brainstorming and generating practice questions for assessments. 

“AI is a good way to do quantitative research, some information might be useful. It is also a good summariser for contents, but the most important parts need to be learnt by ourselves.” 

“I think these tools are very useful in understanding material that is more difficult for some students, As well AI tools can be helpful in practicing or reviewing for exams or creating outlines of papers.” 

These responses reflect an interest in exploring how GenAI could be used to extend and enhance learning and rather than as a replacement for learning. 

Echoing concerns expressed by faculty, many students noted concerns about the potential misuse of GenAI and its impact on academic integrity. Students expressed concerns that GenAI could facilitate cheating on assignments and disadvantage those who don’t use it. 

“I was very frustrated on large online classes with thousands of students it was incredibly easy for students to cheat using AI resulting in those who did follow the rules ended up being under average. It ended up being those who pay for premium AI where guaranteed at eighty to ninety.” 

Rather than banning GenAI, students suggest that current assessment methods be revised to maintain academic integrity, including calls for restructured assignments, increased focus on in-class exams, or embracing “open book” style assessments.

“The best way I think I feel it will be dealt with is just to structure questions or tasks/projects as more of an ‘open book’ style. Assuming we have access knowledge or resources. It would potentially allow us to deal with/be given harder and more complex problems and give more freedom to different approaches to problem solving.” 

In addition, many students expressed concern about GenAI detection tools being used at UBC and the potential for false accusations.  

” I have heard horror stories of people being flagged for using AI but not having the ability to disprove the accusation because how would one really prove the never used AI?” 

Students raised a number of ethical concerns surrounding GenAI’s development and its potential environmental impact. Students brought up concerns with the use of personal data and copyrighted material in training GenAI models. They also expressed concerns about data privacy and expressed discomfort with the idea of their work being uploaded to GenAI tools without their explicit consent. The impact of GenAI on energy consumption and resource usage were also noted extensively in the responses. 

“Teach us to not use it and how it impact and hinder our learning and comprehension. teach us how it impacts the planet, how much energy needs to be produced to keep the servers cooled to run ai. teach us the dangers of it, of the threats of how it can ruin people’s lives.” 

Some students also expressed concerns that over-reliance on AI might hinder the development of important human skills such as critical thinking, creativity, or research abilities. 

“I hate that it exists and I wish it wasn’t used for anything. I hope that UBC will encourage people to at least use their brains when working with ChatGPT instead of using it to answer everything and not doing any critical thinking.”