Date
Publisher
arXiv
Generative AI is transforming higher education, yet systematic evidence on student adoption, usage patterns, and perceived learning impacts remains scarce. Using survey data from a selective U.S. college, we document rapid generative-AI adoption, reaching over 80 percent within two years of ChatGPT's release. Adoption varies sharply across disciplines, demographics, and achievement levels. Students use AI both to augment their learning -- by obtaining explanations and feedback -- and to automate coursework by generating final outputs, with augmentation more common than automation. Students generally perceive AI as benefiting their learning, and these beliefs are strongly correlated with adoption. Institutional policies shape usage but have uneven effects, in part because awareness and compliance vary across student groups. These findings suggest that effective AI policies must distinguish between uses that enhance learning and those that substitute for it.
Study at a glance
- Question: How do college students adopt and use generative AI, and how do they perceive its impact on their learning?
- Setting and data: Students at a selective U.S. college, surveyed within two years of ChatGPT's release.
- Method: Survey of students
Why it matters
Generative AI is transforming higher education, yet systematic evidence on student adoption, usage patterns, and perceived learning impacts remains scarce.
Key findings
- At a selective U.S. college, over 80 percent of students adopted generative AI within two years of ChatGPT's release, though rates varied across groups.
- Students used generative AI more frequently to support learning through explanations and feedback than to automate coursework by generating final outputs.
- Students generally reported that AI benefited their learning, while institutional policies had uneven effects due to differing awareness and compliance across student groups.
Summary drafted with AI from the paper’s abstract and may contain errors. See the full paper for details.
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Study design
