wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\nJames and Owen said they noticed the use of AI in their Staffordshire course \u201calmost immediately\u201d last year when, during their first class, the lecturer put on a PowerPoint presentation that included an AI version of his voice reading off the slides.<\/p>\n
Soon after, they said, they noticed other signs that some course materials were AI-generated, including American English inconsistently edited to British English, suspicious file names, as well as \u201cgeneric, surface-level information\u201d that occasionally referred inexplicably to US legislation.<\/p>\n
Signs of AI-generated material continued this year. In one course video uploaded to the website, a voiceover presenting the material suddenly morphs into a Spanish accent for about 30 seconds, before switching back to a British accent.<\/p>\n
![\"Voiceover](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/2116.jpg\")
Voiceover accent changes mid-lesson in alleged AI-generated course \u2013\u00a0video<\/p>\n
The Guardian reviewed materials from the Staffordshire course and used two different AI detectors \u2013 Winston AI and Originality AI \u2013 to scan course materials from this year. Both of them found that a number of the assignments and presentations had \u201ca very high likelihood of being AI-generated\u201d.<\/p>\n
Early in the course, James said, he brought his concerns to the student representative during a monthly meeting. Then, in late November, he aired them during a lecture, which was recorded as a part of the course materials. In the recording, he asks the lecturer to not bother with the slides.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know these slides are AI-generated, I know that everyone in this meeting knows these slides are AI-generated, I would rather you just scrap these slides,\u201d he says. \u201cI do not want to be taught by GPT.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon after, the student representative on the course chimes in, saying: \u201cWe have fed this back, James, and the response was that teachers are allowed to use a variety of tools. We were quite frustrated by this response.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another student says: \u201cThere are some useful things in the presentation. But it\u2019s like, 5% is useful nuggets, and a lot is repetition. There is some gold in the bottom of this pan. But presumably we could get the gold ourselves, by asking ChatGPT.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lecturer laughs uncomfortably. \u201cI appreciate people being candid \u2026\u201d he says, then he changes the subject to another tutorial he made \u2013 using ChatGPT. \u201cI\u2019ve done this short notice, to be honest,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the course head told James that two human lecturers would be going over the material for the final session, \u201cso you don\u2019t get an AI experience\u201d.<\/p>\n
In response to a query from the Guardian, the University of Staffordshire said \u201cacademic standards and learning outcomes were maintained\u201d on the course.<\/p>\n
It said: \u201cThe University of Staffordshire supports the responsible and ethical use of digital technologies in line with our guidance. AI tools may support elements of preparation, but they do not replace academic expertise and must always be used in ways that uphold academic integrity and sector standards.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the university brought in a non-AI lecturer for the last lecture in the course, James and Owen said this was too little, too late, especially because the university appears to have used AI in this year\u2019s teaching material as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like a bit of my life was stolen,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n
Owen, who is in the middle of a career change, said he had chosen the course to get the underlying knowledge, not just the qualification \u2013 and felt it was a waste of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be sat there with this material in front of you that is just really not worth anyone\u2019s time, when you could be spending that time actually engaging with something worthwhile, is really frustrating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students at the University of Staffordshire have said they feel \u201crobbed of knowledge and enjoyment\u201d after a course…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-303233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}