Vivienne Lam and undergraduate student Jiho Song recently completed a BIOL 448 education research project, in which they integrated the use of Generative AI (GenAI) into the BIOL 121 course and explored how students’ perceptions and usage of GenAI changed throughout the term.
Below, Jiho and Vivienne describe why they chose to engage in this directed studies project, how they did it, and what they learned along the way.
What was your motivation for doing this project?
Vivienne:
My motivation stemmed greatly from attending the GenAI workshops that were held by CTLT, where I saw the immense impact this new technology is having on not just students, but on faculty as well, with the fear that students are going to use it to conduct plagiarism or academic misconduct. I wanted to see what can we do with this tool to enhance student learning and to encourage a positive take on it. Whether we like it or not, GenAI is here to stay, and I think our role now is to help students use GenAI in a way that’s going to benefit their learning, while also pointing out the pitfalls of using it incorrectly. There’s currently a lot of potential we can tap into with GenAI for use in undergraduate courses.
Jiho:
I was excited to work on this project with Vivienne because as a student myself, I know that this is an important issue. Students are becoming more familiar and comfortable with using GenAI to accomplish their coursework; however, the improper use of GenAI can also lead to serious consequences such as academic misconduct. So, in this project we sought to promote the safe and effective use of GenAI among BIOL 121 students, while also exploring how students perceive and utilize GenAI in their academic work and how these attitudes evolve over the term.
How did you do it?
Vivienne:
The first thing I did was recruit Jiho to help me out with this project. I knew that Jiho would be a perfect fit because he already knew the course well, but was still a student and would have that student insight.
Jiho:
We decided to use three worksheet-based activities, one for each unit of the course. These worksheets were designed to introduce students to various ways that GenAI could be used to support their learning of BIOL 121 course content and to study how students were using and thinking about GenAI over the term. We thought worksheets were a suitable delivery method because the BIOL 121 curriculum already incorporates worksheets.
Vivienne:
In creating the worksheets, we first consulted with other instructors who informed us about topics that students had difficulty with. We then thought about how AI could be used as a tool to help them with these struggles, for example, how to use a rubric to produce higher quality answers, and how to create analogies to understand challenging concepts.
Jiho:
Each worksheet also had questions about how students were using GenAI and what their perspectives were on it.
What did you learn?
Jiho:
We learned that by providing these worksheet activities, we can encourage students to use GenAI diversely, thereby improving their understanding of concepts they were once unfamiliar with. For example, the ecology worksheet was effective for this in that that concept of ecological conservation was not familiar for everyone–most students reported that this was an unfamiliar topic–but then through the activity that we created they appreciated how it allowed them to broaden their understanding and see how complex ecological conservation actually is.
Additionally, we learned that use of the worksheets effectively increased students’ awareness of the weaknesses of GenAI and the importance of fact-checking and critically analyzing GenAI outputs due to their unreliability. This was mainly done through our evolution worksheet, where we got students to compare the response of ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0 to the same sample student response and it showed such variability and weaknesses.
Also, it was interesting to see that there was a high variability in the familiarity and the use of GenAI among students. I thought most university students used it, but surprisingly, a lot of people were against it. And even people who were against it varied a lot in their reasoning. For example, some people just didn’t want to compromise their learning, some people were afraid of academic misconduct, and there were others who mentioned the environmental concerns, which I didn’t even personally know about until students mention it.
Vivienne:
I found it really interesting that at the end of the first worksheet these students were super pumped up about using AI in different ways, but by the time we got to the third worksheet (near the end of the term), their usage reverted back to what they started off with at the very beginning of the first worksheet. This just reinforced to me that like with any new tool, we have to constantly encourage and provide opportunities for students to use GenAI in a responsible way, and this might vary in different courses. But if you want to make AI part of how we encourage students to learn about a topic or concept on a deeper level, we have to encourage these more positive applications of AI.
Also, we do have to have clear guidelines so students don’t feel like they might end up accidentally committing academic misconduct. Having firm guidelines and boundaries will make it so that students feel safer using AI, knowing that it can be confusing for students who are taking multiple courses with various policies on AI usage. However, if the AI policies are very different across different courses, different departments, different faculties, I can see it being like a bit of a landmine for students, so they might be reluctant to use it because of that.
What impact did the project have on you, the students, and the course?
Jiho:
Through this project, I most appreciated the success we had in promoting the safe and effective use of GenAI. Many students mentioned that they enjoyed the worksheets, which helped them recognize the weaknesses of AI, as well as the activities that promoted the use of AI to explore and enhance their knowledge in Biology-related topics. It was neat to hear this from the students, and to get their feedback.
Vivienne:
For me, it opened my eyes to how I might potentially use it in other courses that I teach. Again, AI is around to stay, so it’s important to help students carefully consider how they might want to use this in the future.
One thing that I’d like to think about adding to the next iteration of these worksheets is the consideration of how usage of AI might be detrimental to students’ learning from a physiological perspective. There are some recent studies that showed that if it’s used incorrectly, you end up with reduced brain activity and memory recall compared to before, and there are other studies showing dependence and “withdrawal” behaviours with long-term use of AI Chatbots. So I want to help students learn how to use AI in a way that will promote and not hurt their learning in the future.
What challenges did you encounter when designing or carrying out this project?
Jiho:
The first challenge we encountered was choosing which GenAI model to use. We had to ensure we abide by the UBC policy, so although we initially had ChatGPT in mind as our primary GenAI model to use, we switched to Microsoft Copilot, as it was the tool that was approved for use by the university at that time. Another challenge was creating the worksheets. This process took some time, as we had to create new worksheets that were structured to meet our goals, while keeping them concise and engaging.
Vivienne:
Aside from having to switch from ChatGPT to Microsoft Copilot, I wouldn’t say there were any major challenges. It was actually quite fun to build these worksheets with Jiho. I really enjoyed the back and forth with Jiho, and he had great ideas that he brought in.
What advice would you give someone who wanted to an education research-focused BIOL 448 project?
Jiho:
As a student, make sure you are disciplined and are on top of your work. The readings, data collection, analysis, and the final report can come up at you if you are not prepared. So, make sure when you have the time, do a little bit to make sure you are not behind and won’t be too busy once the deadline comes.
Vivienne:
It was really helpful to have someone who was familiar with the course because he already knew the demographics of students and their needs. However, while this factor was important for this particular project, I think any undergraduate students interested in teaching and pedagogy would be great candidates for BIOL 448.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
Vivienne:
First, I would love to see our worksheets being used in other courses, so if you’re interested in seeing or using them, please reach out!
Second, I encourage other instructors to consider doing a BIOL 448 project with a student. It helps to keep you accountable to complete projects that you might not have the time to complete by yourself. Getting to work on this project with a student was motivating, it was super fun to bounce ideas off of each other, and it was extremely satisfying to work together to get it done.
Jiho:
I want to thank Vivienne for guiding me through this project. I enjoyed this project a lot, which helped me feel more involved in the teaching process. I felt like I was doing something relevant and contributing to the education of students, which was very rewarding. Overall, I’m grateful for this awesome experience!