1 Nigerian Students Turn to aI For Tests Answers, Lecturers Raise Alarm
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Expert System (AI) is revolutionizing education while making discovering more accessible but also stimulating debates on its effect.

While students hail AI tools like ChatGPT for boosting their learning experience, speakers are raising issues about the growing dependence on AI, which they argue fosters laziness and undermines scholastic integrity, specifically with lots of students not able to defend their assignments or provided works.

Prof. Isaac Nwaogwugwu, a lecturer at the University of Lagos, in an interview with Nairametrics, revealed aggravation over the growing reliance on AI-generated responses amongst trainees recounting a current experience he had.

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"I provided a project to my MBA trainees, and out of over 100 trainees, about 40% submitted the exact very same responses. These trainees did not even understand each other, but they all used the exact same AI tool to produce their responses," he said.

He kept in mind that this trend is prevalent amongst both undergraduate and postgraduate trainees however is specifically concerning in part-time and distance knowing programs.

"AI is a severe obstacle when it pertains to projects. Many trainees no longer believe critically-they just browse the web, produce answers, and submit," he added.

Surprisingly, some speakers are likewise implicated of over-relying on AI, setting a cycle where both teachers and trainees turn to AI for benefit instead of intellectual rigor.

This dispute raises critical concerns about the function of AI in academic integrity and trainee advancement.

According to a UNESCO report, while ChatGPT reached 100 million month-to-month active users in January 2023, just one nation had released regulations on generative AI as of July 2023.

As of December 2024, ChatGPT had over 300 million people using the AI chatbot weekly and 1 billion messages sent every day all over the world.

Decline of scholastic rigor

University lecturers are increasingly concerned about trainees sending AI-generated projects without genuinely comprehending the material.

Dr. Felix Echekoba, a lecturer at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, expressed his concerns to Nairametrics about students significantly relying on ChatGPT, just to battle with answering basic concerns when checked.

"Many students copy from ChatGPT and submit sleek projects, however when asked standard concerns, they go blank. It's frustrating because education is about learning, not just passing courses," he stated.

- Prof. Nwaogwugwu explained that the increasing variety of first-class graduates can not be entirely associated to AI but confessed that even high-performing students utilize these tools.
"A first-class trainee is a first-class student, AI or not, however that does not mean they do not cheat. The advantages of AI may be peripheral, however it is making trainees reliant and less analytical," he stated.

- Another speaker, Dr. Ereke, from Ebonyi State University, raised a various concern that some lecturers themselves are guilty of the same practice.
"It's not simply students using AI lazily. Some speakers, out of their own laziness, produce lesson notes, course lays out, marking plans, and even examination concerns with AI without examining them. Students in turn use AI to produce responses. It's a cycle of laziness and it is killing real learning," he lamented.

Students' perspectives on usage

Students, on the other hand, state AI has enhanced their learning experience by making scholastic products more understandable and available.

- Eniola Arowosafe, a 300-level Business Administration student at Unilag, macphersonwiki.mywikis.wiki shared how AI has considerably aided her learning by breaking down complex terms and providing summaries of lengthy texts.
"AI assisted me understand things more easily, specifically when handling complex subjects," she discussed.

However, she remembered an instance when she used AI to send her task, prazskypantheon.cz only for her speaker to immediately recognize that it was produced by ChatGPT and reject it. Eniola kept in mind that it was a good-bad effect.

- Bryan Okwuba, who recently graduated with a first-class degree in Pharmacy Technology from the University of Lagos, strongly thinks that his scholastic success wasn't due to any AI tool. He attributes his outstanding grades to actively appealing by asking concerns and focusing on areas that lecturers stress in class, as they are typically shown in examination concerns.
"It's all about being present, focusing, and using the wealth of knowledge shared by my colleagues," he said,

- Tunde Awoshita, a final-year marketing student at UNIZIK, confesses to periodically copying straight from ChatGPT when dealing with multiple due dates.
"To be sincere, there are times I copy directly from ChatGPT when I have several due dates, and I know I'm guilty of that, the majority of times the speakers do not get to review them, but AI has actually likewise assisted me find out quicker."

Balancing AI's function in education

Experts think the option lies in AI literacy