GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN STUDY PRACTICES. DIAGNOSIS OF SCALE, AREAS, AND INSTITUTIONAL CONDITIONS, RESEARCH REPORT

Abstract

The report addresses the issue of Polish students’ experiences related to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in academic education. The study constitutes a further stage in the research team’s long-term interest in socio-educational transformations resulting from contemporary crises and technological developments. Previous projects conducted by the team focused on experiences of remote education during the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequences of the war in Ukraine, resulting in publications based on an autoethnographic perspective. The emergence of generative artificial intelligence and large language models, including ChatGPT, has created a new field of research concerning human–technology relations and transformations in contemporary education.

The aim of the present study is to explore how Polish students use AI tools in their everyday academic work and to identify their experiences, needs, and concerns related to these technologies. Eleven research questions were formulated, addressing, among other issues, the AI tools used by students, the purposes for which they are employed, the use of paid versions, the impact of AI on students’ ways of studying, the types of academic tasks for which AI is used, training needs, concerns about disclosing AI use, methods of verifying AI-generated information, and the support provided by universities.

The interpretation of the research problem is grounded in a competency-based and human-centred approach, emphasizing human agency, transparency, responsibility, and the critical evaluation of AI-generated content. Particular attention is given to the delegation of cognitive operations to algorithmic environments, the reliability of AI-generated content, and the ethical and institutional conditions of AI use.

The study has a diagnostic character and is not intended to statistically generalize its findings to the entire population of Polish students. The use of open-ended questions and an autoethnographic perspective is intended to facilitate a confrontation between the researchers’ own experiences and the authentic voices of students who use AI in their academic practice. Future studies involving larger and more diverse samples may contribute to a deeper analysis of the identified trends and to assessing their persistence across different academic contexts.