Using GenAI in the Academic Environment – a Survey on the Experience of Students of the Faculty of Business Administration

Abstract

The paper discusses the results of a survey of university students' experiences with GenAI tools and their support for learning and other academic activities. The influence of GenAI on academic activities is undisputable. Since the moment the first GenAI tools became available, the academic environment has been one of the most affected industries. It is clear that GenAI speeds up and simplifies some tasks, changes how teachers and students work with knowledge, and raises ethical and legal questions about academic integrity, particularly regarding plagiarism. At the moment, GenAI is with us, and we cannot ignore it. Our students use it, and they will continue to use it, regardless of what their teachers believe, recommend, or ban. As GenAI use in the academic environment influences knowledge work and pedagogical processes, it is important to understand how our students work with it: for which tasks they use it and how, what advantages they see in its use, and whether and how they understand its risks. It is also important to determine whether students correctly understand GenAI and its relevance to academic work. To answer the questions listed above, we did the survey among master's students of the programme Management at the Faculty of Business Administration, Prague University of Economics and Business. The survey had two objectives. The first objective was to determine how students use GenAI in their learning and other academic activities. We developed three simple research questions to learn this: How do students use GenAI for learning and academic work? What are the advantages and what are the disadvantages of GenAI for learning and academic work from a student's perspective? Previous experience with students indicates that, even though students use and depend on GenAI tools extensively, they have no idea which principles GenAI works on. Therefore, the second research objective was to learn whether students understand the principles on which GenAI operates. To learn this, we developed the fourth research question: Do students know which principles GenAI works on? The survey results indicate that students use GenAI for various academic purposes and value it because it is readily available and simplifies and speeds up their work. They are aware of its impact on users, including their cognitive capacity. They also know that GenAI answers may be biased or incorrect. Unfortunately, they have no idea how GenAI works, and that its principles of operation differ from those of the human brain.