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1 Nigerian Students Turn to aI For Tests Answers, Lecturers Raise Alarm

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing education while making discovering more accessible but likewise sparking arguments on its impact.

While students hail AI tools like ChatGPT for boosting their learning experience, lecturers are raising issues about the growing reliance on AI, which they argue fosters laziness and undermines scholastic stability, specifically with numerous students unable to protect their tasks or given works.

Prof. Isaac Nwaogwugwu, a speaker at the University of Lagos, in an interview with Nairametrics, revealed aggravation over the growing reliance on AI-generated reactions among students recounting a current experience he had.

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"I gave a task to my MBA trainees, and out of over 100 trainees, about 40% sent the precise same responses. These trainees did not even understand each other, but they all used the very same AI tool to generate their reactions," he said.

He kept in mind that this pattern is prevalent among both undergraduate and postgraduate trainees but is especially worrying in part-time and distance learning programs.

"AI is a major difficulty when it concerns assignments. Many students no longer think critically-they simply browse the web, generate answers, and submit," he added.

Surprisingly, some lecturers are also implicated of over-relying on AI, setting a cycle where both educators and trainees turn to AI for benefit instead of intellectual rigor.

This debate raises vital concerns about the role of AI in scholastic integrity and student advancement.

According to a UNESCO report, while ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users in January 2023, only one country had actually launched regulations on generative AI since July 2023.

Since December 2024, ChatGPT had more than 300 million individuals using the AI chatbot each week and 1 billion messages sent out every day around the globe.

Decline of academic rigor

University lecturers are increasingly concerned about trainees submitting AI-generated projects without truly comprehending the content.

Dr. Felix Echekoba, a speaker at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, expressed his concerns to Nairametrics about trainees increasingly depending on ChatGPT, only to have a hard time with responding to basic concerns when tested.

"Many trainees copy from ChatGPT and submit refined tasks, however when asked fundamental concerns, they go blank. It's frustrating since education has to do with discovering, not simply passing courses," he stated.

- Prof. Nwaogwugwu pointed out that the increasing number of superior graduates can not be totally credited to AI but admitted that even high-performing trainees use these tools.
"A first-class student is a first-class student, AI or not, but that doesn't indicate they do not cheat. The benefits of AI might be peripheral, however it is making trainees reliant and less analytical," he said.

- Another lecturer, pipewiki.org Dr. Ereke, from Ebonyi State University, raised a different issue that some speakers themselves are guilty of the very same practice.
"It's not just trainees utilizing AI lazily. Some lecturers, out of their own laziness, produce lesson notes, course outlines, marking plans, and even examination concerns with AI without evaluating them. Students in turn utilize AI to produce answers. It's a cycle of laziness and it is eliminating real knowing," he lamented.

Students' viewpoints on usage

Students, on the other hand, say AI has actually improved their knowing experience by making scholastic materials more reasonable and accessible.

- Eniola Arowosafe, a 300-level Business Administration trainee at Unilag, shared how AI has actually considerably helped her knowing by breaking down complex terms and supplying summaries of lengthy texts.
"AI helped me understand things more easily, specifically when dealing with complicated topics," she described.

However, she remembered an instance when she utilized AI to send her project, just for her speaker to right away recognize that it was produced by ChatGPT and reject it. Eniola noted that it was a good-bad impact.

- Bryan Okwuba, who just recently finished with a first-rate degree in Pharmacy Technology from the University of Lagos, securely believes that his academic success wasn't due to any AI tool. He attributes his outstanding grades to actively interesting by asking questions and concentrating on areas that lecturers stress in class, as they are typically shown in test questions.
"It's everything about being present, focusing, and taking advantage of the wealth of understanding shared by my associates," he said,

- Tunde Awoshita, a final-year marketing student at UNIZIK, confesses to occasionally copying straight from ChatGPT when dealing with numerous deadlines.
"To be truthful, there are times I copy directly from ChatGPT when I have several due dates, and I understand I'm guilty of that, a lot of times the lecturers do not get to review them, however AI has also helped me discover much faster."

Balancing AI's function in education

Experts believe the service depends on AI literacy