Universities are increasingly introducing artificial intelligence (AI) teaching tools into classrooms.
The latest case to make headlines is Macquarie University’s “Virtual Peer” – an AI-chatbot introduced in two psychology units. In the online delivery of these units, some material previously taught through Zoom tutorials is now delivered by the AI chatbot and other online activities.
This comes as hundreds of University of Sydney staff walked off the job last week, calling for greater job security as AI teaching tools become more common practice.
Meanwhile, some students have also raised concerns that replacing teaching interactions with AI could devalue their degrees.
So is AI use in courses a good thing? And when might it become a problem?
How AI is being used in teaching
Unis are using AI for a range of purposes. From a student’s perspective, most uses fall into four familiar functions: tutoring, lecturing, feedback provision, and marking. These are all core parts of university teaching traditionally done by human teachers. They are not new functions or abilities created by the availability of AI.
Among the most common uses of AI at uni is feedback provision. Educators at Sydney University, for example, have used AI platform Cogniti to allow students to get 24/7 feedback on their assessments prior to submission.
Similarly, this year the University of Wollongong began trialling AI “study buddies” across 15 large first-year subjects. Its aim is to provide academic support to new students and answer their common questions as they transition into uni.
Some systems extend tutoring into practice and rehearsal. La Trobe University’s “Fletch” plays a disgruntled parent, changing its responses as trainee teachers work through a difficult conversation.
Lecturing by an AI rather than by a human is less common, at least at the moment, but it is starting to appear. For example, the University of Newcastle has announced an AI avatar will deliver lectures in a computing subject. This involves the academic writing the script while software generates the presenter’s voice and moving face.
Is this a bad thing?
From an institutional perspective, there are good reasons to develop these AI tools. First, educationally designed AI might itself allow unis to better monitor and control students’ AI use.
Research has shown around half of Australian uni students use AI on their own initiative for feedback on their work. This AI use, unless strictly controlled by the student themselves, is at least as likely to provide answers (or simply do the work itself) as it is to provide real feedback.
When unis create their own in-house feedback AI agents, they can aim to set better controls and boundaries around students’ AI use. This helps unis ensure AI use is supporting, rather than replacing, learning. Or, at least it can as long as students limit themselves to using the AI their institutions provide.
Second, students may well benefit from the around-the-clock feedback AI can offer.
Research has consistently shown one of the biggest complaints students have about feedback is its lack of timeliness. When AI is used as a substitute for human-provided feedback, students can ask questions whenever they arise. They can also request additional explanations without embarrassment.
Third, AI tools can communicate with students in their own language.
My own research suggests around half of Australian students use AI to read academic texts at university. The most frequent groups to do so are those students translating ideas and concepts into their native language or into a disciplinary context they are most familiar with.
There are risks
Of course, there are disadvantages to using AI tools in unis as well.
AI can be inaccurate, make things up entirely, flatten out complicated ideas and present concepts from a narrow western-male viewpoint. There are also the wider environmental concerns that come with AI use due to the energy consumption of data centres.
The lack of rules around how unis should use AI in courses complicates how we should weigh these risks.
The Australian government has regulations around teaching quality and student support. But there are no specific rules telling a university when, where, why or how an AI chatbot may or may not be used.
These are serious questions to resolve. Research shows the decisions we make now might be hard, even impossible, to undo.
All these concerns matter. But even if they were solved, a different problem might remain.
What is lost if AI replaces a human educator?
Students need to be recognised
Education is more than just a simple transfer of information.
When a student asks a question in a tutorial, the answer helps them, but their question also shows the educator where the class is up to and what might need more of their focus. This interaction helps the educator to tailor their teaching appropriately.
When feedback comes from an educator it can also show the student their work and their development are worth taking seriously. This is what my research terms “recognition”.
One of the most important things we risk losing when we replace a human educator with AI is our mutual recognition of each other.
Recognition is not simply praise, kindness or “human connection”. An educator might recognise a student by challenging a weak argument, noticing genuine progress or expecting more from them in their work. Such responses position the student as someone capable of participating in a field of knowledge, and whose ideas deserve serious judgement.
An AI system can produce clear and useful feedback and it might even generate the same words as an educator. But it cannot, by itself, recognise the student. The information may be similar, but that doesn’t mean the educational interaction is too.
The post “AI is becoming more common in uni courses. What can students gain and what might they lose?” by Thomas Corbin, Research Fellow, Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning, Deakin University was published on 09/08/2026 by theconversation.com