Student Spotlight: Navigating the use of GenAI in a Case Study assessment

So my name is Ella Young, and I study a Bachelor of Medical Biotechnology, and I'm in my second year at the moment. So I remember, like, I think when I was about in year 12 and my first year of university, I became I came in contact with Generative AI for the first time, and it was more like through an academic landscape. I was able to realise that it has a lot of really positive impacts.

For example, in my management class, I've actually been encouraged to use generative AI such as GPT to not do things for me, but to encourage me to analyze how it's answering things. And it's helped me see my own thoughts through a different perspective.

I was very like almost uncomfortable because I hadn't really used ChatGPT too much, so I had to learn how to write correct prompts and how to use it to its full capability. But I had also never used it in a way that I was having like a discussion with Generative AI. Usually like in the past I would just take what its output was and just straight away that that was fact.

I was able to like discuss with it almost, I remember, leaving the class and going like, Wow, I've never experienced A.I. in that way. Like to help me see things through a different lens that isn't impacted by my own life experiences and to also, like help add on to what I had thought about the scenario as well, like different dispute like mechanisms to reduce disputes like I had was able to add to my list as well and I was able to like pick and choose what I wanted to take from it by combining our answers.

Some groups definitely noticed bias being the major thing. Some other groups as well thought that ChatGPT wasn't effective because it was getting like basic managing terms wrong. So some people were very passionate about ignoring the responses. It was actually really interesting because our class of maybe like 15 people, not that many. There was a lot of differing opinions on the effectiveness of using ChatGPT to analyze like a human emotion-based scenario. And some other groups recognised that as well. They thought that ChatGPT lacked emotion and wasn't really able to reconcile with any of the characters in the scenarios. But it was interesting to see that everyone had different opinions and was able to take away something different.

I realised, like when I was reading this scenario, I was completely on the employee's side because I could envision myself, like in my own past experiences, I've had some really horrible bosses that have treated me poorly.

So I was immediately on their side. But ChatGPT was equal, and even gave reasons into why the manager is acting like rashly and harshly, maybe because of these things that that person's dealing with and I didn't really see it in that way. There was some areas where definitions of certain terms we had learned and course ChatGPT got completely wrong. So that showed us some areas of like disadvantage. But then it also made us more aware and to go, Oh, maybe it's not, we shouldn't take GPT verbatim, but we should look at the areas that it's really strong in. And that's where we were able to show and that reduced bias. And that was my biggest takeaway and it helps me like, see, I could definitely see myself using it in like a scenario of myself as well.

I think it was really, really like positive feedback because the whole point of the assessment task was to make us understand that we're just humans and living a human experience. And so especially in a management position, when you're dealing with a lot of other humans, with other human experiences, it's really complex thing to navigate. So when I said in our presentation that I recognised that I had bias whilst reading ChatGPT responses, when I hadn't thought about that prior, she was immediately like, Yes, that's what I wanted you to see. And it was really nice because it was like using ChatGPT as a life lesson almost to realise that we're all different people and that's how you can work with other people.

The biggest takeaway from that assessment task was realising that there's just probably millions of uses for generative AI, and we haven't even unlocked like a million yet. Like we're still at the beginning. So we need to be creative in terms of how we use it to assist teaching students. I think I would just like the university to know that generative AI is our friend and that students also want to be in an environment that they feel like they can be comfortable enough to learn how to use it. We need to listen to our students.