Nigerian Students Turn To AI For Tests Answers Lecturers Raise Alarm

Expert System (AI) is changing education while making discovering more available but also triggering debates on its impact.


While trainees hail AI tools like ChatGPT for enhancing their knowing experience, lecturers are raising issues about the growing reliance on AI, which they argue fosters laziness and undermines academic stability, specifically with lots of students not able to defend their projects or given works.


Prof. Isaac Nwaogwugwu, a lecturer at the University of Lagos, in an interview with Nairametrics, expressed disappointment over the growing dependence on AI-generated actions amongst trainees stating a current experience he had.


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"I offered a project to my MBA trainees, and out of over 100 students, about 40% sent the precise very same responses. These students did not even know each other, but they all used the same AI tool to generate their responses," he stated.


He kept in mind that this trend is common among both undergraduate and postgraduate trainees but is especially concerning in part-time and range learning programs.


"AI is a major difficulty when it concerns assignments. Many students no longer believe critically-they just browse the web, create responses, and send," he added.


Surprisingly, prawattasao.awardspace.info some speakers are likewise implicated of over-relying on AI, setting a cycle where both teachers and students turn to AI for benefit rather than intellectual rigor.


This argument raises vital concerns about the function of AI in academic stability and student development.


According to a UNESCO report, while ChatGPT reached 100 million month-to-month active users in January 2023, just one country had actually launched policies on generative AI as of July 2023.


Since December 2024, ChatGPT had over 300 million individuals using the AI chatbot each week and 1 billion messages sent every day worldwide.


Decline of academic rigor


University speakers are significantly worried about trainees submitting AI-generated projects without really understanding the material.


Dr. Felix Echekoba, a speaker at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, disgaeawiki.info revealed his issues to Nairametrics about trainees progressively counting on ChatGPT, only to have a hard time with answering standard questions when evaluated.


"Many students copy from ChatGPT and send refined tasks, but when asked basic concerns, they go blank. It's frustrating since education has to do with learning, not just passing courses," he said.


- Prof. Nwaogwugwu pointed out that the increasing number of first-class graduates can not be totally credited to AI but confessed that even high-performing students utilize these tools.


"A top-notch student is a top-notch student, AI or not, but that doesn't mean they do not cheat. The benefits of AI may be peripheral, however it is making trainees reliant and less analytical," he stated.


- Another speaker, Dr. Ereke, from Ebonyi State University, raised a different issue that some lecturers themselves are guilty of the very same practice.


"It's not just trainees utilizing AI slackly. Some lecturers, out of their own laziness, produce lesson notes, course lays out, marking schemes, and even examination concerns with AI without examining them. Students in turn use AI to produce responses. It's a cycle of laziness and it is eliminating real knowing," he regreted.


Students' point of views on usage


Students, on the other hand, say AI has improved their learning experience by making scholastic products more understandable and available.


- Eniola Arowosafe, a 300-level Business Administration trainee at Unilag, shared how AI has significantly helped her learning by breaking down complex terms and offering summaries of prolonged texts.


"AI helped me understand things more easily, particularly when dealing with complex subjects," she described.


However, she remembered a circumstances when she used AI to send her job, just for her speaker to right away recognize that it was generated by ChatGPT and decline it. Eniola noted that it was a good-bad impact.


- Bryan Okwuba, who just recently graduated with a first-rate degree in Pharmacy Technology from the University of Lagos, firmly thinks that his academic success wasn't due to any AI tool. He attributes his exceptional grades to actively interesting by asking questions and concentrating on areas that lecturers emphasize in class, as they are often shown in exam concerns.


"It's everything about being present, taking note, and tapping into the wealth of knowledge shared by my coworkers," he said,


- Tunde Awoshita, a final-year marketing trainee at UNIZIK, admits to periodically copying directly from ChatGPT when dealing with multiple due dates.


"To be sincere, there are times I copy straight from ChatGPT when I have numerous due dates, and I know I'm guilty of that, the majority of times the lecturers don't get to read through them, however AI has also assisted me discover quicker."


Balancing AI's role in education


Experts believe the solution lies in AI literacy; mentor students and lecturers how to utilize AI as a knowing help rather than a faster way.


- Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, highlighted the combination of AI into Nigeria's education system, stressing the significance of a balanced method that preserves human involvement while harnessing AI to improve discovering results.


"As we navigate the quickly developing landscape of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is essential that we prioritise human agency in education. We need to guarantee that AI boosts, rather than replaces, teachers' vital function in forming young minds," he said


Concerns over AI in Learning


Dorcas Akintade, a cybersecurity transformation specialist, attended to growing concerns regarding making use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT and their prospective risks to the educational system.


- She acknowledged the benefits of AI, however, fishtanklive.wiki stressed the need for care in its usage.

- Akintade highlighted the increasing hesitance among educators and schools towards including AI tools in discovering environments. She identified two main factors why AI tools are prevented in academic settings: oke.zone security risks and plagiarism. She discussed that AI tools like ChatGPT are trained to react based on user interactions, which may not align with the expectations of teachers.


"It is not looking at it as a tutor," Akintade stated, explaining that AI does not accommodate specific mentor techniques.


Plagiarism is another concern, as AI pulls from existing information, often without proper attribution


"A lot of individuals require to comprehend, like I said, this is data that has been trained on. It is not simply bringing things out from the sky. It's bringing info that some other people are fed into it, which in essence implies that is another individual's documentation," she warned.


- Additionally, Akintade highlighted an early concern in AI development called "hallucination," where AI tools would create info that was not factual.


"Hallucination indicated that it was bringing out information from the air. If ChatGPT could not get that information from you, it was going to make one up," she described.


She "grounding" AI by offering it with particular info to avoid such errors.


Navigating AI in Education


Akintade argued that banning AI tools outright is not the service, coastalplainplants.org especially when AI provides a chance to leapfrog standard instructional approaches.


- She thinks that regularly strengthening key info helps individuals remember and avoid making mistakes when faced with challenges.


"Immersion brings conversion. When you tell individuals the same thing over and over again, when they will make the errors, then they'll remember."


She likewise empasized the requirement for clear policies and treatments within schools, noting that lots of schools should deal with the people and process aspects of this use.


- Prof. Nwaogwugwu has actually resorted to in-class tasks and tests to counter AI-driven academic dishonesty.


"Now, I primarily use assignments to ensure trainees offer initial work." However, he acknowledged that handling big classes makes this approach hard.


"If you set intricate concerns, students will not be able to utilize AI to get direct answers," he discussed.


He stressed the need for universities to train lecturers on crafting exam concerns that AI can not easily fix while acknowledging that some speakers struggle to counter AI abuse due to a lack of technological awareness. "Some speakers are analogue," he stated.


- Nigeria launched a draft National AI Strategy in August 2024, focusing on ethical AI advancement with fairness, openness, responsibility, and personal privacy at its core.

- UNESCO in a report requires the regulation of AI in education, encouraging institutions to examine algorithms, data, and outputs of generative AI tools to ensure they fulfill ethical requirements, secure user information, and filter improper material.

- It stresses the requirement to assess the long-lasting effect of AI on vital skills like thinking and creativity while developing policies that line up with ethical structures. Additionally, UNESCO suggests executing age limitations for garagesale.es GenAI use to secure younger students and safeguard susceptible groups.
- For governments, it advised embracing a coordinated nationwide method to regulating GenAI, consisting of establishing oversight bodies and lining up guidelines with existing data security and privacy laws. It stresses examining AI dangers, imposing more stringent rules for high-risk applications, and ensuring national information ownership.