Lecturers and students disagree sharply on how much AI is used, study finds

Lecturers believe students lean on generative AI far more than students say they do, according to a study reported by TechRadar. Academic staff who took part rated their sense of how much AI is used at 5.23 out of 7 on average, while students put the figure at 3.11.

The work came from the University of Manchester and Universidad del Pais Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea in Spain, and ran from April to June 2024. Researchers surveyed 45 teaching staff and 86 students, all drawn from social science departments at a university focused on research.

Generative tools were the subject of the research. The study lists common uses such as drafting written text, checking the grammar of work already written, carrying out research, looking up answers for assignments, and locating sources more quickly.

The authors acknowledge that students may be understating their own habits. They also point out that teaching staff can struggle to detect AI use in the first place. Among the academics surveyed, only 14 percent held a paid subscription to an AI tool.

Dr Mark Carrigan, a senior lecturer in education at Manchester and a co-author, said discussion of AI in higher education often swings between worries about cheating and claims that it will transform learning. He described the real situation as more complicated than either view allows.

Carrigan said institutions need to know more about what students actually do with these tools. In his view, staff and students hold noticeably different pictures of current practice, which makes it hard for universities to build sound policy when they are working from guesswork rather than evidence about student experience.

He argued that both groups should be brought into the use of AI rather than treated with distrust. Universities, he suggested, should concentrate on sensible ways for these tools to aid study and should reconsider how teaching and assessment work in a world where AI is widely available.

The findings should be read with care, since they rest on one institution and date from a two-year-old project. Student use of AI has grown quickly in recent years, and the technology now sits alongside familiar study aids for coursework and research. Some educators have accepted that they will mark AI-assisted work, while others have responded more drastically.