Copy, paste, repeat? Students rethinking AI as schools adapt, but educators still fear critical-thinking cost

Fourth-form Jonathan Grant High School student Alexander Ashley had a revelation when he completed his first term in grade 10. Although he did very well in his take-home assignments, the final grades on his report card from the St Catherine-based institution painted a very different picture.

The astute youngster quickly identified the cause; he had been relying heavily on generative artificial intelligence (AI) large language tools, such as ChatGPT and Gemini to complete his assignments, a habit that ultimately undermined his academic performance.

“Mi realise seh, even if yuh use AI to write the essay and all these things, yuh nuh really have it inna your head so when you go CXC (Caribbean Examinations Council) and dem ting deh, yuh cyaa really do it,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.

After coming to this understanding, Ashley said he changed the way he used the technology, and it now functions as a tool used to enhance his learning.

As a result, the 15-year-old said he became a better student and saw a gradual improvement in his academics.

“Instead of just using it to do your work, you can mek it read over the work that you have done, and give you pointers on how to fix it. You can give it documents to read over and summarise it, so you can understand it better. It can also allow you to do preliminary tests so you know where you are at in that topic,” he said.

His classmate Kcamoni Henry tells a similar story of initially offloading his homework to ChatGPT.

“Mi get the question dem and yuh can literally copy the question dem, put dem inna AI, and it answer the whole a dem,” he said.

But over time, he, too, realised the disadvantages, which included being penalised for plagiarism, forcing him to change his approach.

“Mi use AI fi help mi get the understanding and then mi wudda put it inna mi own words, so really and truly, it a help mi out and help mi do the work,” he said.

Now the 17-year-old said the AI tools he uses are like a “second teacher”, filling in the gaps when needed.

“Mi wudda get a question bout one plus one a two, put it inna AI, that AI tell me one plus one a two, and it tell mi how mi get two. Dat mek mi understand how fi get it,” he said.

Robust policies

These students are among a growing number across academic levels who believe AI is enhancing their learning. But questions remain about its impact on their cognitive development, academic honesty, the integrity and effectiveness of traditional assessment methods, and whether there are robust policies to keep pace with the rapidly evolving technology.

A recent study by Paul Golding, professor of information systems at The University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech), and Dr Tiou Clarke, a lecturer at the UTech’s College of Business and Management, found that 96 per cent of secondary students and 100 per cent of tertiary students are already using generative AI tools for academic-related tasks.

Meanwhile, 86.7 per cent of faculty respondents reported using AI tools to prepare classes and support professional tasks.

Golding, who has been examining the impact of AI on academic integrity and assessing how prepared Jamaica’s education system is to adapt to the technology, also found in a second study that between 50 and 60 per cent of students at the high-school level believe AI is improving their mental acuity.

But this extensive use of AI by students is causing a fundamental shift in education, Golding argued.

“What this means, though, is that the way that we teach, what we teach, the way that we assess how students learn – how we learn – will need to change,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.

For Tanya Sharpe*, an English language and literature teacher at a Kingston-based high school, the response was to scrap homework that involves writing altogether and require students to write extensively in class after realising how reliant many had become on AI.

“I think it (AI) impacts their critical-thinking skills because you can see, especially for literature, whereas before you would find that students were more analytical, they were willing to question more, they were willing to write more,” she said.

Overreliance on AI

She described her students’ overreliance on AI as an “onslaught”, telling The Sunday Gleaner that even her above-average students sometimes become stymied whenever they need to do any sort of inferential thinking.

Since making her students do their extensive writing in class about two years ago, the teacher of almost three decades said she is often taken aback by their reaction.

“It takes them a longer time to process the information because they aren’t used to thinking on their feet because they could easily go to the AI. It takes them a long time to process … and they easily become frustrated, and I’m not saying that didn’t happen in the past, but it wasn’t the majority,” she said.

Despite concerns about how AI may be compromising their cognitive development and memory, Sharpe said she doesn’t completely shun its use in her classroom and encourages her students to use it for comparative analysis and creativity.

In fact, she admitted to also using different large language models for her research, but laments that there is currently no clear policy at her school that guides its use. She said teachers there are reliant on the standards set by CXC.