Impact of AI Assistance on Student Agency
What we don't want is for student use of AI to inhibit their learning, and that's what seemed to happen in this study. Will something similar happen whenever we integrate AI into an assignment? Probably not, but this is a problem that we want to avoid in the design of our assignments and it's a concern we can have our students address in their reflections on AI assignments.
However, our study in the context of providing AI assistance with writing feedback suggests that students tended to rely on AI assistance rather than actively learning from it. In our study, the reliance on AI became apparent when the assistance was removed, as students struggled to provide feedback of the same quality without the AI's guidance. Furthermore, our research explored the effects of replacing AI assistance with guidance and tips on providing constructive feedback, as well as the utilisation of self-monitoring checklists for students to evaluate the quality of their work independently. This approach proved to be effective, resulting in high-quality feedback when compared to the scenario of removing AI assistance entirely. However, it still demonstrated lesser effectiveness in comparison to relying solely on AI assistance.