"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility!": Student and Instructor Perspectives on the influence of LLMs on Undergraduate Engineering Education
It provides empirical data on how LLMs like ChatGPT influence undergraduate engineering education, offering practical implications for students and instructors, though it is incremental as it fills a gap in existing research.
This paper addresses the lack of comprehensive user studies on LLMs in education by conducting surveys and interviews with 1306 students and 27 instructors in Indian undergraduate engineering universities, revealing insights into usage patterns, benefits, threats, and recommendations for adoption.
The rise in popularity of Large Language Models (LLMs) has prompted discussions in academic circles, with students exploring LLM-based tools for coursework inquiries and instructors exploring them for teaching and research. Even though a lot of work is underway to create LLM-based tools tailored for students and instructors, there is a lack of comprehensive user studies that capture the perspectives of students and instructors regarding LLMs. This paper addresses this gap by conducting surveys and interviews within undergraduate engineering universities in India. Using 1306 survey responses among students, 112 student interviews, and 27 instructor interviews around the academic usage of ChatGPT (a popular LLM), this paper offers insights into the current usage patterns, perceived benefits, threats, and challenges, as well as recommendations for enhancing the adoption of LLMs among students and instructors. These insights are further utilized to discuss the practical implications of LLMs in undergraduate engineering education and beyond.