Understanding Faculty and Student perceptions of ChatGPT

Abstract Generative AI (GAI) has begun to saturate our world. In November of 2022 the wide release of Open AI's ChatGPT began a snowball effect of GAI implementation in almost every sector. Simple online searches are now supplemented with Google's Bard AI and Microsoft Bing's GPT 4.0. Open AI's ChatGPT chat bot began as a free service but now includes a myriad of additional paid functionalities, and purpose-built solutions are emerging from companies like Adobe in their creative suites and Microsoft in their office suite. GAI as a pervasive disruptive technology is far from full maturation, and it will continue to exist in our digitally influenced world indefinitely. In recent technological history, disruptions have been a hallmark of a healthy tech industry; however, those disruptions have had markedly less reach and have been comparatively much less rapid. GAI however seemed to storm major news feeds overnight, leaving the general population in awe and some in fear of the power AI may have in our near future. The rapid nature of GAI disruption has led the authors of this work to explore how engineering faculty and students in higher education are perceiving this technology, particularly ChatGPT, in the context of engineering education. The authors of this paper developed a survey instrument and distributed it to faculty, staff, and students at Anonymous University, garnering over 1000 responses. The purpose of this work is to examine these responses, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to ascertain how students, faculty, and staff perceive ChatGPT as it is situated into the space of engineering education. Some basic statistical methods will be used to showcase various comparisons between the groups surveyed, and emergent qualitative coding was used to develop a narrative that will be presented to paint a story of how faculty and students are using this GAI technology in their lives. The authors of this work believe it is important to not only share the perceptions of students and faculty at Anonymous University, but to also share a glimpse into the process of how this disruptive technology spurred organizational change at Anonymous University in hopes that it can be valuable for other university faculty facing the same now global issue of GAI.