Student Introduction
AI presents enormous opportunities, as well as some challenges, for today’s students. We stand at a crossroads of a revolution in how work is done, which promises to permanently alter the professional environment. Students must embrace the inevitable changes, and, moreover, become proficient users of AI so as not to get left behind.
You may have heard it before: “AI is not going to replace you. But the person who knows how to use AI will replace you.”
Student Use of AI
While AI represents a tempting shortcut for work/homework/assignments, this temptation should be resisted unless your instructor has asked you to use AI.
Think about it this way: you COULD bring a forklift with you to the gym to help you lift weights. It would be easier. The weights would get lifted with far less effort from you. You would save time.
But you would not be doing yourself any favors. In the gym, the struggle to lift heavy things IS THE ENTIRE POINT. If you don’t endure struggle, your muscles are never challenged and they never grow. The same is true of intellectual assignments. The point here IS the struggle. Don’t skip it. Only WITH the struggle will you ever develop your critical thinking skills. These are the kind of skills that are hard-won, and you don’t want to deprive yourself of that opportunity.
Don’t be the person who shows up for a job interview with nothing but forklift weights to their credit.
That said, you should know how to USE artificial intelligence. In fact, if you don’t, you’ll stand out less than the other applicants who DO. Keep in mind that everyone now uses AI. Your job isn’t to generate AI output. It’s not your job to be the SAME as AI. Your job is actually to be BETTER than AI, which involves knowing what AI says but you saying more, giving better context/examples.
AI is a tool. Don’t let it become more than that for you.
Career Readiness
Employers increasingly want to hire new employees who are “plug and play” with AI fluency and the standard AI tools.
Students are urged to prepare themselves by using a broad variety of AI tools and becoming aware of the differences between them.
One of the best ways to position yourself as an AI-fluent job candidate would be to create and maintain an “AI Portfolio” thoughout your time at UCF. In it, you could like ways across the semesters you used AI for your coursework. Here is an example.
AI Courses and Certificates
There are several ways students can learn more about AI:
- “AI for All” course from the Computer Science department. This course is technical, but does not require coding/programming.
- Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Human Impacts. This 12-hour certificate from the department of Writing & Rhetoric draws from interdisciplinary perspectives across the College of Arts and Humanities to provide students with critical and creative approaches to the ethics, uses, histories, and broad implications of big data-driven technologies such as Artificial Intelligence.
Study Techniques with AI
Don’t just avoid AI–use it!
Here are some ways AI can help you become better students:
- Use AI as a tutor. Ask it for study questions, FAQs, or even just disciple-specific information.
- Use AI as a study partner. It can generate example test/quiz questions. This is especially useful in disciplines that are well-understood, like sciences. However, be on the lookout here for “hallucinations,” where AI predicted/invented the next word but didn’t actually think through right and wrong answers.
- Make AI your reflection partner about studying and learning. It’s been proven that thinking ABOUT your learning makes you a better learning. AI provides you a free, easy, unthreatening partner.
Using AI to Create Class Assignments
Verify first! You should absolutely assume that AI-generated content might be invented or hallucinated. Do not just trust in the output!
Do not assume what your instructor does and does not permit in terms of AI usage toward assignments. Instead, consult the syllabus. If the syllabus is silent, approach the instructor instead of making assumptions.
Citing AI Output
The intentional use of AI-assisted tools for any element of a work or school product must be disclosed (example: “an outline of topics for this work were generated by Copilot with Enterprise Data Protection, March 7, 2025”).
Your instructor may have more specific citation requirements. Here’s a different example for a Works Cited page:
OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT3.5 (March 31, 2025) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat
Use of AI that is not intentionally sought, and is embedded within larger software (e.g., predictive text sentence completions, auto-correct, spell check, etc.), does not need to be disclosed. Disclosing the use of grammar assistance (including Grammarly) is not centrally mandated for students, and may depend on individual faculty policy.