Scaffold or Crutch? Examining College Students' Use and Views of Generative AI Tools for STEM Education

Some students use AI to answer almost all exam questions. In related news, instructors and students have pretty different attitudes about AI

Wang, K. D., Wu, Z., II, L. T., Wieman, C., Salehi, S., & Haber, N. (2024). Scaffold or Crutch? Examining College Students’ Use and Views of Generative AI Tools for STEM Education (No. arXiv:2412.02653). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2412.02653

This piece of survey research is on the smaller side (40 STEM students and 28 STEM instructors) but includes an interesting look into patterns of engagement in specific behaviors by students, and

an interesting comparative look into how student and instructor attitudes about generative AI differ. At least among this group of respondents, instructors wouldn’t recommend generative AI for tasks that students think it’s helpful for.