Kasun is one of an increasing number of higher education faculty using generative AI models in their work.<\/p>\n
One national survey<\/a> of more than 1,800 higher education staff members conducted by consulting firm Tyton Partners earlier this year found that about 40% of administrators and 30% of instructions use generative AI daily or weekly \u2014 that\u2019s up from just 2% and 4%, respectively, in the spring of 2023.<\/p>\n New research<\/a> from Anthropic \u2014 the company behind the AI chatbot Claude \u2014 suggests professors around the world are using AI for curriculum development, designing lessons, conducting research, writing grant proposals, managing budgets, grading student work and designing their own interactive learning tools, among other uses.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we looked into the data late last year, we saw that of all the ways people were using Claude, education made up two out of the top four use cases,\u201d says Drew Bent, education lead at Anthropic and one of the researchers who led the study.<\/p>\n That includes both students and professors. Bent says those findings inspired a report on how university students use the AI chatbot<\/a> and the most recent research on professor use of Claude.<\/p>\n How professors are using AI\u00a0<\/p>\n Anthropic\u2019s report is based on roughly 74,000 conversations that users with higher education email addresses had with Claude over an 11-day period in late May and early June of this year. The company used an automated tool to analyze the conversations.<\/p>\n The majority \u2014 or 57% of the conversations analyzed \u2014 related to curriculum development, like designing lesson plans and assignments. Bent says one of the more surprising findings was professors using Claude to develop interactive simulations for students, like web-based games.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s helping write the code so that you can have an interactive simulation that you as an educator can share with students in your class for them to help understand a concept,\u201d Bent says.<\/p>\n The second most common way professors used Claude was for academic research \u2014 this comprised 13% of conversations. Educators also used the AI chatbot to complete administrative tasks, including budget plans, drafting letters of recommendation and creating meeting agendas.<\/p>\n Their analysis suggests professors tend to automate more tedious and routine work, including financial and administrative tasks.<\/p>\n \u201cBut for other areas like teaching and lesson design, it was much more of a collaborative process, where the educators and the AI assistant are going back and forth and collaborating on it together,\u201d Bent says.<\/p>\n