Preparing students for an AI-driven world
Artificial Intelligence, a sensitive topic. And while most educators have strong opinions about it, Schrepel felt the conversation lacked solid data.“I wanted to see if and how ChatGPT impacts students’ skill development and our role as educators,” he explains. “How exactly do we equip our students for a future where AI will be a standard tool in their professional lives?”
For Schrepel, preparing students for this new reality means giving them a competitive edge: “Professionals with strong AI skills have a real advantage right now. I expect that edge will fade as AI skills become more common, but for now, it’s an exciting period.” To find out how AI could shape student learning, Schrepel put it to the test.
How students handled the experiment
Schrepel divided his students into three groups and gave them the same task: improve part of the European AI Act. Group 1 wasn’t allowed to use ChatGPT, Group 2 received AI-generated suggestions built into the text, and Group 3 was given prompts to refine the AI Act using ChatGPT directly.
The results were surprising. “While I expected Group 3 to perform the best and Group 1 to struggle, it was Group 2’s performance that stood out. Group 3 did outperform the others, but Group 1 actually did better than Group 2—at least during the exam,” he notes.
Things became even more interesting during the actual seminars. In a nutshell, most of what students in Group 2 did was debate whether ChatGPT’s suggestions were good enough to keep. Often reverting to the original AI Act provisions without improving them. “Some even adjusted other provisions to match ChatGPT’s suggestions without questioning their quality. I pointed this out, and I could see they got surprised by what they did. I hope that experience sticks with them,” Schrepel concludes.
“The question I ask myself is this: should I spend classroom time teaching students what they should avoid doing with AI, what they can safely do, or what they can now accomplish that was never possible before?”
Hot topic among faculty members
The use of AI in the classroom didn’t just change the student’s performance. It also changed the classroom dynamic and the learning process. “It gives students a ton of material to work with, which they can analyse, challenge, and discuss with each other.” And AI’s unpredictability adds another layer to this. “Large language models are non-deterministic, meaning you can’t fully control what they’ll come up with. That unpredictability makes my lectures more interesting and engaging. Students get to see how I handle those unexpected results and how I process new information, which I think is very valuable for them.”
This shift hasn’t gone unnoticed among faculty members, either. “My colleagues were also intrigued. As you can imagine, the use of ChatGPT in the classroom is a heavily debated topic among faculty members,” Schrepel adds. Some are hesitant to use AI in their teaching, while others are exploring how to make it work. “It takes care of a lot of the time-consuming tasks as a teacher that don’t really add much to the learning process, which frees up time for more meaningful discussions with the students.”
AI as a tool, not a replacement
Schrepel compares ChatGPT to having 60 research assistants, each with a different area of expertise. “This allows me to work with AI for many tasks. But not all, of course: where I believe my expertise is needed, and where I wouldn’t even trust an excellent research assistant. For instance, I don’t use AI to develop the core arguments of my papers. I also don’t use AI whenever I can’t afford a single piece of data or information to be missing. However, I do use it for – among other things – formatting footnotes, spotting and fixing spelling mistakes, providing feedback and critique on my work, and so on.”
As for where it’s all heading, he replies that it’s hard to say. “AI is evolving so rapidly that its impact on education could shift in unexpected ways. That’s why it’s so important for universities to stay flexible and keep a close eye on these developments.”
