Learning unfolds as a dialogue between a student and a more knowledgeable other – in higher education, a lecturer – a dialogue marked by mutual respect, responsibility and trust as the key pillars of this process. For many higher education courses, the concluding remark – the pinnacle – takes the form of summative assignment feedback. In line with a humanistic approach, this feedback ought to be personalised, foster a sense of students’ personal identity, and provide a feedforward towards realistic future goals (Hamachek, 1977).
Yet, it also must be genuine and address the student as a whole, rather than focusing solely on the quality of the work they have submitted. Otherwise, the congenial learning experience is disrupted, potentially resulting in a lasting negative effect on students’ educational motivation. The use of AI for feedback generation thus appears to pose a far more serious threat to education than plagiarism concerns, as although the feedback produced is personalised, it is impersonal by nature as there is no person behind it.
The discourse around generative AI used by students has turned full circle, from initial concerns about plagiarism to the acknowledgment of the need to teach students how to ethically integrate AI into their workflow (see for example Lukeš et al., 2023). However, once the use of GenAI is applied to feedback generation, most articles and blog posts focus primarily on one side of the coin – that is, on the benefits it offers (AlBadarin et al., 2023; Li et al., 2023). Whether the product or the source of such representation, Barrett and Pack (2023) argue that lecturers tend to have a significantly more positive outlook on the use of AI for feedback generation than students.
Just like with students, generative AI eases lecturers’ participation in the educational process and is casually positioned as a time-saver, which also supposedly benefits students through a shorter feedback turnaround. So why is it wrong for students to use AI tools when submitting for marking what is supposed to be the outcome of their own intellectual engagement with the task, but is a welcomed practice for lecturers to do the same when engaging with what students submit?
