2025 AIChE Annual Meeting

(262c) Understanding Student Perceptions of Generative AI in Engineering Education

Authors

Wissam Kontar, University of Nebraska
Engineering education has continually adapted to technological advancements, using emerging tools to enhance learning. A new potential rises with the advent of generative AI tools, which necessitates an exploration of their role in education – with a special focus on sustainability. This study investigates the potential role of generative AI in sustainability education, through a case study involving student critique of a ChatGPT-generated essay on Dr. Suess’s “The Lorax”. Specifically, students in a sustainability engineering class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, were tasked to reflect on questions regarding the use and experience with generative AI tools during their coursework. The analysis focus- ing on sentiment and topic discovering, reveals a general positive sentiment from students towards those tools. Students found merit in AI’s ability to personalize learning, generate ideas, help in writing and coding, and reducing time of differ- ent tasks. Negative sentiment was mostly influenced by shallow reasoning of the tool and confusion around its output. This suggests that generative AI may be a useful tool in sustainability education, but not without caveats.

Engineering education has evolved over time, much as the tools for the trade and imple- mentation of engineering have evolved. What was once state of the art is now obsolete, for example the transition from the slide rule to the electronic calculator. With the advent of these new tools, educational methods have changed and adapted. Computer programming is now considered an essential part of an engineering curriculum, when a hundred years ago that would have been an unthinkable concept. These disruptive technological shifts changed and in many ways improved how engineering is done. At the same time, new technologies are often approached with fear – the introduction of elevators as an example – and sometimes that fear is justifiable, often relying on the improvements of the technologies – such as elevator brakes – before wide scale accep- tance. Technologies themselves are generally never good nor bad inherently, however, how they are employed by humans greatly influences their narrative.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT represent a new evolution in the constant turning of new technologies and considering their role in engineering education. There has been much written in the last few years around these technologies, both highlighting the possible benefits and challenges. Regardless of the different stances, it is important to see these AI tools, as they are, as tools which may be used for both the benefit and destruction of humankind. The same could be said of dynamite, it has both the potential to enable the usage of new critical resources through applications such as mining, and the potential to kill people. And while dynamite may have been invented with the former in mind, it has been applied by people and through their behavior for both instances. The question now is how should tools such as generative AI be applied in the context of engineering and sustainability education in order to facilitate learning?

In the application of sustainability education, the challenge is how to use these tools to enable deeper thinking of sustainability topics. This work explores the student critique of a ChatGPT response to class-relevant prompt centered around a reading of and an essay based on Dr. Suess’s “The Lorax”. The Lorax, a children’s book first published in 1971, explores many sustainability topics through a story based around resource use and deforestation. The Lorax is a small, orange, furry creature who claims to speak for the trees and animals because they cannot speak for themselves. The Onceler, comes to the area and begins cutting down the trees and generating air and water pollution in order to make garments. The Lorax appears after the first tree is cut down. The Onceler largely disregards the warnings of the Lorax, and keeps increasing the size and sophistication of his factories with corresponding increases in environmental pollution. Until he runs out of trees and feels remorse.