Listening to the student and staff voice on Artificial Intelligence

On 4 March 2024, The University of Northampton Centre for Active Digital Enhancement (CADE) hosted an A.I. roundtable with five students on UON’s Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Course and their Professor.

The discussion started on how the rapid developments in AI had impacted on both the tutors’ and the students’ experience of the course and how the definition of AI had evolved as a response to this.

“AI…has made us more anxious as there are more developments every day. But there are also new opportunities becoming available.” – Student quote

“I wouldn’t want AI to replace all of the work. I want it to help people – to facilitate and create more opportunities.” – Student quote

The group reflected on the fact that as they were studying AI, they were already ahead of much of the population in knowledge of this area. They are using their knowledge to help others find out about AI. The general population do not need to be too concerned about prompt engineering (interacting with AI) to get started with tools, as the current systems are becoming far more advanced in trying to understand what people are trying to seek from the query.

“Through AI we can get a response immediately. It saves tutor time as they don’t need to always respond to hundreds of the same questions. AI is a 24/7 learning hub – we can go anytime / anywhere we are – we can search anything we want regarding our studies or upskilling ourselves. It can give us links on how we can upgrade our skills.” – Student quote

This was tempered by the fact that the quality of information needs to be fact checked prior to it being used.

“We cannot completely rely on AI – we can take the idea of what we want to learn from AI and then work from there.” – Student quote

“It’s all about helping our students use AI more responsibly – it’s about understanding limitations and strengths. It is about developing skills to work in collaboration with AI – making AI a powerful tool but not losing your critical thinking skills. That’s what we really care about.” – Tutor quote

The University approach to developing AI literacy was welcomed by the group. It was noted that the valuable research in understanding the student experience and attitude towards AI had informed the University attitude and that the ongoing open conversations between staff and students would enable the University to move forward together. It was noted that Northampton particularly provided highly practical advice in combination with fantastic learning and teaching.

There was a strong feeling that AI will impact on student employability both in terms of building AI but also using it in the course of everyday work.

“The course has been really helpful. It has helped me build my skills compared to a normal student. AWS certification which the University provides us with is really helpful as employers look for particular certifications – particularly in AI to be more relevant in the field.” – Student quote

“We will be working with AI and also to build AI [as an AI engineer].” – Student quote

“AI will open more opportunities in our careers.”– Student quote

The students feel they do have a role in attempting to make companies more responsible – they can give the perspective from the local level and then perhaps influence the Government.

Students wanted companies to provide more student discounts and become more open on the models which are being used to train and develop their models. It is not currently clear how the results are being generated.

Finally, the roundtable reflected whether AI was being created for the benefit of humanity or whether it was about companies creating profit.

“Some of the big tech companies are embarrassing themselves at this point on how they are fighting each other on the AI areas. [and with the quality of early / rushed releases]. They are not looking to bring out the best in themselves. They are eager to get users for their reputations.” – Student quote

“There are some opensource models. Meta is playing a good game as it has released its models as Opensource.” – Student quote

The group reflected on the discussion and noted that whilst there were risks with risking AI, it was inevitable that it would rapidly develop and we needed to adapt and embrace the opportunities.

“There is no choice – we need to adopt to AI.” – Student quote

The recording (41 minutes) may be found at:

Roundtable Participants from the University of Northampton:

• Rob Howe, Head of Learning Technology and CADE (Centre for Active Digital Enhancement) Co-Lead.
• Dr Mu Mu – Professor of Human-Centred Data Intelligence.

UON Students on the Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Course:

• Ryan Gichuru
• Jatin Arora
• Saurish Mahajan
• Shazab Hassan
• Quoc Nguyen

The Centre for Active Digital Enhancement sincerely thanks the participants in this roundtable for the honest and open discussion – and for their valuable contributions to the discussion. Thanks also go to Richard Byles for filming and editing the video and to Kelly Lea for helping to organise and support the event.

Rob Howe

Rob Howe, Head of Learning Technology and CADE (Centre for Active Digital Enhancement) Co-Lead.