Reacting to Generative AI: Insights from Student and Faculty Discussions on Reddit
Open accessAbstract
Generative Artificial intelligence (GenAI) such as ChatGPT has elicited strong reactions from almost all stakeholders across the education system. Education-oriented and academic social media communities provide an important venue for these stakeholders to share experiences and exchange ideas about GenAI, which is constructive for developing human-centered policies. This study examines early user reactions to GenAI, consisting of 725 Reddit threads between 06/2022 and 05/2023. Through natural language processing (NLP) and content analysis, we observe an increasingly negative sentiment in the discussion and identify six main categories of student and faculty experiences of GenAI in education. These experiences reflect concerns about academic integrity and AI's negative impact on the value of traditional education. Our analysis also highlights an additional workload imposed by new technologies. Our findings suggest that dialogue between stakeholders in the education community is critical and can mitigate sources of tension between students and faculty.
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Faculty could complain about increased workload due to the need to manage more AI-related academic integrity problems.
“Recent research has shown that faculty could complain about the increased workload due to the need to manage more AI-related academic integrity problems [62].”
From AI Governance in Higher Education: Case Studies of Guidance at Big Ten Universities (2024) · cites this paper as [62]
Identifying inappropriate use of AI in coursework is a known struggle for faculty and instructors.
“For example, identifying inappropriate use of AI in coursework is a known struggle for faculty and instructors [62]”
From AI Governance in Higher Education: Case Studies of Guidance at Big Ten Universities (2024) · cites this paper as [62]
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AI Governance in Higher Education: Case Studies of Guidance at Big Ten Universities
Wu, C., Zhang, H., & Carroll, J. M. (2024) · Future Internet · doi:10.3390/fi16100354 · Cited by 99 · see citing works
Self-citationChoi, W., Bak, H., An, J., Zhang, Y., & Stvilia, B. (2025) · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.24978 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
- Authors
- Wu, C., Wang, X., Carroll, J., & Rajtmajer, S.
- Affiliations
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- Venue
- ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci)
- Publisher
- Center for Open Science
- Published
- 2024-01-18
- Pages
- 103-113
- OpenAlex
- W4394879862
- Cited by
- 26
- References
- 16
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 3
- FWCI
- 9.88
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci) (publishedVersion)
- EdArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Artificial Intelligence in Education
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Keywords
- generative AI in education, ChatGPT, student and faculty perceptions, Reddit discussions, academic integrity, AI policy in higher education, stakeholder conflict
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