Generative AI and Teachers -- For Us or Against Us? A Case Study

TL;DR

This study surveys university teachers' adoption of generative AI, revealing widespread use, perceived impact on teaching, and concerns about accuracy and cheating, highlighting the need for legislation.

Contribution

It provides empirical data on how university educators are integrating GenAI into teaching and their attitudes towards regulation and ethical concerns.

Findings

Over half of surveyed teachers use GenAI in teaching.

ChatGPT is the most popular GenAI tool among respondents.

Majority see impact on teaching and support legislation due to concerns.

Abstract

We present insightful results of a survey on the adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) by university teachers in their teaching activities. The transformation of education by GenAI, particularly large language models (LLMs), has been presenting both opportunities and challenges, including cheating by students. We prepared the online survey according to best practices and the questions were created by the authors, who have pedagogy experience. The survey contained 12 questions and a pilot study was first conducted. The survey was then sent to all teachers in multiple departments across different campuses of the university of interest in Sweden: Lule{\aa} University of Technology. The survey was available in both Swedish and English. The results show that 35 teachers (more than half) use GenAI out of 67 respondents. Preparation is the teaching activity with the most frequency that GenAI is used for and ChatGPT is the most commonly used GenAI. 59% say it has impacted their teaching, however, 55% say there should be legislation around the use of GenAI, especially as inaccuracies and cheating are the biggest concerns.