Nigerian Students Turn to aI For Tests Answers, Lecturers Raise Alarm
Expert System (AI) is revolutionizing education while making discovering more available but likewise triggering arguments on its impact.
While students hail AI tools like ChatGPT for boosting their learning experience, speakers are raising issues about the growing reliance on AI, which they argue fosters laziness and weakens academic stability, especially with lots of students not able to safeguard their projects or given works.
Prof. Isaac Nwaogwugwu, a lecturer at the University of Lagos, in an interview with Nairametrics, expressed frustration over the growing dependence on AI-generated actions among trainees stating a current experience he had.
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"I offered an assignment to my MBA trainees, and out of over 100 trainees, about 40% sent the precise very same answers. These students did not even understand each other, however they all utilized the exact same AI tool to produce their actions," he stated.
He kept in mind that this trend prevails among both undergraduate and postgraduate trainees however is particularly worrying in part-time and distance knowing programs.
"AI is a major challenge when it pertains to assignments. Many students no longer believe critically-they just browse the web, produce responses, and send," he included.
Surprisingly, some speakers are also accused of over-relying on AI, setting a cycle where both teachers and trainees turn to AI for benefit rather than intellectual rigor.
This dispute raises important questions about the role of AI in academic stability and trainee advancement.
According to a UNESCO report, while ChatGPT reached 100 million regular monthly active users in January 2023, only one nation had launched policies on generative AI since July 2023.
Since December 2024, ChatGPT had more than 300 million individuals utilizing the AI chatbot every week and 1 billion messages sent out every day worldwide.
Decline of academic rigor
University speakers are progressively concerned about trainees submitting AI-generated tasks without really comprehending the content.
Dr. Felix Echekoba, a lecturer at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, revealed his issues to Nairametrics about students significantly counting on ChatGPT, just to deal with answering fundamental questions when tested.
"Many students copy from ChatGPT and send polished tasks, however when asked standard concerns, they go blank. It's frustrating due to the fact that education is about discovering, not simply passing courses," he stated.
- Prof. Nwaogwugwu pointed out that the increasing number of top-notch graduates can not be totally credited to AI but admitted that even high-performing trainees use these tools.
"A first-rate student is a superior trainee, AI or not, but that does not mean they do not cheat. The benefits of AI may be peripheral, but it is making trainees dependent and less analytical," he said.
- Another speaker, Dr. Ereke, from Ebonyi State University, raised a various issue that some speakers themselves are guilty of the same practice.
"It's not simply students utilizing AI lazily. Some speakers, out of their own laziness, generate lesson notes, course lays out, marking schemes, and even test concerns with AI without examining them. Students in turn use AI to generate answers. It's a cycle of laziness and it is killing genuine learning," he lamented.
Students' point of views on usage
Students, on the other hand, say AI has actually improved their knowing experience by making academic products more easy to understand and accessible.
- Eniola Arowosafe, a 300-level Business Administration student at Unilag, shared how AI has actually substantially helped her knowing by breaking down complex terms and offering summaries of prolonged texts.
"AI assisted me comprehend things more easily, specifically when dealing with complex topics," she discussed.
However, she recalled an instance when she utilized AI to send her job, only for her lecturer to right away recognize that it was generated by ChatGPT and reject it. Eniola noted that it was a good-bad result.
- Bryan Okwuba, who just recently finished with a first-class degree in Pharmacy Technology from the University of Lagos, strongly believes that his scholastic success wasn't due to any AI tool. He associates his impressive grades to actively engaging by asking questions and focusing on locations that speakers emphasize in class, as they are frequently shown in test concerns.
"It's all about being present, focusing, and tapping into the wealth of understanding shared by my coworkers," he said,
- Tunde Awoshita, a final-year marketing trainee at UNIZIK, confesses to occasionally copying straight from ChatGPT when dealing with several due dates.
"To be truthful, there are times I copy straight from ChatGPT when I have several due dates, and I know I'm guilty of that, the majority of times the speakers don't get to review them, but AI has actually also helped me learn quicker."
Balancing AI's role in education
Experts believe the solution lies in AI literacy; mentor trainees and lecturers how to use AI as a knowing help instead of a faster way.
- Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, highlighted the combination of AI into Nigeria's education system, worrying the of a balanced method that keeps human involvement while harnessing AI to improve learning outcomes.
"As we navigate the rapidly progressing landscape of Expert system (AI), it is important that we prioritise human agency in education. We need to guarantee that AI enhances, instead of changes, teachers' vital function in forming young minds," he stated
Concerns over AI in Learning
Dorcas Akintade, a cybersecurity improvement expert, addressed growing issues regarding using expert system (AI) tools such as ChatGPT and their potential dangers to the educational system.
- She acknowledged the advantages of AI, nevertheless, emphasized the need for caution in its use.
- Akintade highlighted the increasing resistance amongst educators and prawattasao.awardspace.info schools towards including AI tools in discovering environments. She identified 2 primary reasons that AI tools are prevented in educational settings: security threats and plagiarism. She described that AI tools like ChatGPT are trained to react based upon user interactions, which might not align with the expectations of educators.
"It is not looking at it as a tutor," Akintade stated, discussing that AI does not accommodate specific teaching techniques.
Plagiarism is another problem, as AI pulls from existing data, often without correct attribution
"A great deal of people require to comprehend, like I said, this is information that has been trained on. It is not simply bringing things out from the sky. It's bringing info that some other people are fed into it, which in essence means that is another individual's documents," she warned.
- Additionally, Akintade highlighted an early problem in AI advancement understood as "hallucination," where AI tools would create info that was not factual.
"Hallucination suggested that it was highlighting information from the air. If ChatGPT could not get that info from you, it was going to make one up," she explained.
She advised "grounding" AI by offering it with particular info to avoid such errors.
Navigating AI in Education
Akintade argued that banning AI tools outright is not the solution, particularly when AI presents an opportunity to leapfrog traditional instructional approaches.
- She thinks that consistently reinforcing key information assists individuals remember and avoid making mistakes when faced with obstacles.
"Immersion brings conversion. When you inform people the very same thing over and over again, when they will make the mistakes, then they'll remember."
She likewise empasized the need for genbecle.com clear policies and procedures within schools, noting that lots of schools should deal with the people and procedure elements of this usage.
- Prof. Nwaogwugwu has actually resorted to in-class assignments and tests to counter AI-driven academic dishonesty.
"Now, I mainly utilize projects to guarantee students offer original work." However, he acknowledged that managing large classes makes this approach difficult.
"If you set complex questions, students won't be able to utilize AI to get direct answers," he explained.
He emphasized the requirement for universities to train lecturers on crafting exam questions that AI can not easily solve while acknowledging that some lecturers struggle to counter AI misuse due to an absence of technological awareness. "Some lecturers are analogue," he stated.
- Nigeria released a draft National AI Strategy in August 2024, concentrating on ethical AI advancement with fairness, transparency, responsibility, and personal privacy at its core.
- UNESCO in a report calls for the regulation of AI in education, advising organizations to audit algorithms, data, and outputs of generative AI tools to ensure they fulfill ethical standards, safeguard user data, and filter improper content.
- It stresses the need to examine the long-lasting impact of AI on important abilities like thinking and imagination while developing policies that line up with ethical frameworks. Additionally, UNESCO suggests executing age constraints for GenAI usage to secure younger students and forum.kepri.bawaslu.go.id secure susceptible groups.
- For federal governments, it advised embracing a coordinated national technique to managing GenAI, including establishing oversight bodies and aligning regulations with existing information defense and personal privacy laws. It highlights evaluating AI threats, implementing more stringent rules for high-risk applications, and ensuring national data ownership.