Student Use of Artificial Intelligence in Everyday Life and Higher Education

Kristopher Cleland

Advisor: Blake Silver, PhD, Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Committee Members: Joseph Scimecca, Christiopher Keller Morris

Online Location, Zoom
April 01, 2026, 01:00 PM to 02:30 PM

Abstract:

Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly the generative kind, is a recent, disruptive, and revolutionary force in education. In order for higher education to adapt to these new technologies we need to know how students are using them. This study involves an ethnography of online forums and in-depth interviews with university undergraduate students to answer the question: How are students using AI in their everyday lives and in higher education? Specifically, I explore the ways students navigate AI resources and how they make meaning of their use. The online ethnographic portion of this study was conducted prior to in-depth interviews, in part to gain a general sense of how undergraduate students might be utilizing AI, and to understand how students are discussing these topics with one another. This online ethnography revealed how students communicate about – and share strategies for – employing AI as a variety assistant in the form of a tutor, summarizer, note-taker, and general interlocutor; as a tool to manage their time, organize their day, and answer general questions on what they should or should not do; and how they use it to augment or automate their work. This portion of the study offered early evidence of an ongoing conversation that is currently occurring among students regarding what constitutes as “fair use” of AI in college and what constitutes inappropriate use, setting up a boundary, which I term “the line.”

In the study’s in-depth interviews, research participants broadly discussed how they utilized AI in their everyday lives and in college, along with conversations about the ways they should or should not use AI in these contexts. I extend research in the sociology of education to cover “how” students are using AI, with a thematic analysis informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of social and cultural capital. This chapter demonstrated how undergraduates employed AI to augment or replace social capital, like turning to AI in ways students traditionally sought assistance from tutors, professors, or therapists. Additionally, these interviews showcased the myriad of ways students leverage their cultural capital to employ AI’s assistance with everyday tasks and coursework, frequently in ways that cultivate additional cultural capital. For instance, I demonstrate how students use AI for general guidance, career preparation, planning, and augmenting or completing writing and coding assignments.

Further analysis of these in-depth interviews informs an investigation of how undergraduate students are navigating to what extent, if at all, they should and are employing AI in their everyday lives and in college. Implementing grounded theory, this chapter begins with revisiting “the line” – the boundaries students draw to distinguish honorable from dishonorable behavior when it comes to AI use – that was identified first in the online ethnographic portion of this study. Findings reveal how research participants were divided into three categories based on how they utilized AI, ranging from nearly entire abstainers to almost complete integrators. This analysis also considers undergraduate students’ concerns about over-reliance on AI; the limited learning that may be resulting from it; justifications for its employment; and worries about other aspects of its use. These findings have implications for sociologists studying student experiences in higher education as well as for teachers and practitioners working with students.

Join us on Zoom:  https://gmu.zoom.us/j/94277125333?pwd=VmMbjUkrSSlfuD6v7gtoZisnsfLFHh.1