As a starting point, make sure you’ve read our page on Responsible AI Use at UCF.
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 to remain competitive in the workplace.
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.”
Recommended AI Tool: Copilot-Chat
The official AI tool at UCF is Copilot-Chat (which is also known as Copilot-Web). The term “Copilot” is also used by Microsoft to refer to embedded AI in MS Office products, but the web-based chat tool is separate.
Copilot with Commercial Protection isnot the same thing as “Copilot.” The latter is the public model of Microsoft’s LLM, also available on the web. Copilot with Commercial Protection (if logged in with a UCF NID) is a “walled garden” for UCF that offers several benefits:
- It searches the current Internet and is not limited to a fixed point in time when it was trained
- It uses GPT-4 (faster, better) without having to pay a premium
- It uses DALL·E 3 to generate images within the Copilot application
- It provides a live Internet link to indicate where the information was found.
- Faculty, staff, and students log in with their NID
- Data stays local and is NOT uploaded to Microsoft or the public model version of Copilot. Inputs into Copilot with Commercial Protection are NOT added to the system’s memory, database, or future answers. However, per UCF retention policies, a local copy is kept in a hidden (local) mailbox folder in your own Sharepoint account for you to view or delete.
The safe version of UCF’s Copilot is accessed via this procedure:
- Start at this URL: http://portal.office.com
- If the site doesn’t recognize your UCF email, switch to the Edge browser.
- Click “sign in” at the top-right
- Select “work or school” for the type of account
- Type your full UCF email (including @ucf.edu) and click NEXT
- Log in with your NID and NID password. (Note: you may need to alter your SafeSearch settings away from “Strict”)
- You should see a checkmark in a green shield near the top. This is how you know you are in “data protection” mode.
Using AI to Create Class Assignments
Before using AI to complete an assignment, consult the syllabus. If there is no stated policy on AI usage, ask the instructor for guidelines on what is approved and appropriate.
If AI tools are permitted, be aware that AI-generated content is unreliable. It may be invented, biased, inaccurate, or lacking in context or nuance. Sources and other information presented as factual may be hallucinations. Therefore, carefully evaluating the output is essential. Ultimately, the completed work is the student’s responsibility and AI errors are considered student errors.
Cognitive Offloading: When AI Undermines Student Learning
While AI may offer a tempting shortcut for completing coursework, its use should be avoided unless explicitly permitted by the instructor.
The appeal of AI lies in its efficiency. It can produce results quickly and with minimal effort. This convenience, however, can come at the cost of true learning and knowledge acquisition. Consider the analogy of bringing a forklift to the gym. While it might easily and quickly lift the weights, the person won’t build any muscles from the process. The struggle is the point. Only through effort and challenge can growth occur.
The same principle applies to academic work. Assignments are designed not just to produce answers, but to cultivate critical thinking, problem-solving, and resilience. There are no shortcuts to attaining these skills. They can only be gained by completing the work.
Relying on AI to bypass that process may result in short-term gains, but it undermines long-term learning and the purpose of pursuing higher education and the “muscle” needed to succeed in the workplace.
That said, developing AI fluency is essential. In today’s workplace, those who can use AI tools effectively stand out during the interview process and in the workforce. But your role isn’t to just use AI tools. It’s to be better than what AI can produce… and that involves knowing how to provide context, insight, originality, ethical reasoning, empathy, and customization.
AI is a tool. Let it assist you, not replace you.
Career Readiness
One of the best ways to position yourself as an AI-fluent job candidate is to prepare by using a broad range of AI tools and becoming aware of their differences and individual uses. To showcase these skills and other ways you’ve used AI in your coursework, consider creating and maintaining an AI Portfolio throughout your time at UCF.
You may wish to customize your preparation for a career. If you know what type of occupation you are targeting, you might wish to ask AI for specific skillsets you’d be expected to have; or alternately view this related resource with specific ideas by occupation.