Abstract:

In the last years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, started to be used across the university context. However, students often interact with AI without critical thinking, which can result in an indiscriminate and non-reflexive use. Therefore, the present teaching innovation project (2023PID-UB/011) aimed to reinforce the learning process by incorporating assignments that require a critical use of AI tools at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

During the first semester of the present academic year (2023-2024), this strategy was applied to the subject “Analytical Techniques in Food Safety” in the context of the interuniversity Master in “Food Safety” at the University of Barcelona (UB). For that purpose, as a part of the first subject’s modules, students were asked to solve a particular question: to specify with the help of AI the advantages and disadvantages of using a lateral flow system instead of an ELISA technique. Then, they had to analyze the result the AI generated and provide a constructive criticism of the outcome, indicating whether they agreed or not with the results. In case they disagreed, they had to specify if there was something wrong or missing. After that, it was inquired about the students’ knowledge of AI resources as well as their opinion regarding their use of AI at the university.

According to the opinion survey, the most popular tools of AI among students were ChatGPT (known by 100% of them), followed by Humata (22.2%) and Bard (11.1%). None of the students was aware of Tome or others. Thus, although students were familiar with the existence of various AI tools, ChatGPT was the only one reported to be used, but not by all students (only 77.8%). Regarding the use of AI at university, 66.7% of students admitted to using AI as a tool in their academic assignments. In this sense, students reported that the use of AI in home assignments should not be restricted (with an agreement level of 2.8 out of 5 in a Likert scale). In fact, most of them considered that using AI systems to answer the proposed activity resulted educational for them (4 out of 5) and that the activity allowed them to be more critical with the information obtained from AI (4 out of 5). Most students described that they were aware about the possibility of getting incorrect and/or incomplete information by the AI. Overall, they considered the AI-related-activity as a very positive experience (4.11 out 5).

It can be concluded that AI tools are already used by university master’s students, and students already point out the importance of being critical with the information obtained from AI.

Keywords:

Artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, critical thinking.