Based on a survey of 1,500 people in the U.S. by the global marketing company Allison Worldwide, including 1,000 students aged 14-22 and 500 teachers at either the high school or college level, the report said higher ed students were more likely to report AI use than their high school counterparts by a wide margin. While 82 percent of college students responded that they had used AI, 58 percent of high schoolers said the same.
“College students are adopting AI at a rapid pace, illustrating that this technology isn’t a trend but rather a profound shift in how they learn and engage with curriculum,” Meghann Lomas, senior director of product management at Quizlet, said in a public statement. “Students want to use AI responsibly, and guidance from educators and administrators, along with the ed-tech companies building these solutions, can help them.”
According to the report, Quizlet researchers started the survey last year when they found teachers reported using AI at a higher rate than students. Since then, students have caught up, and then some. In a similar report from Quizlet in 2023, 65 percent of teachers reported that they had used AI technologies compared to 61 percent of students. This year, the percentage of teachers using AI stayed about the same (67 percent), but the student percentage rose to meet them (66 percent).
Quizlet found that more higher ed institutions implemented guidelines on AI over the past year. Among college students, 41 percent reported that their institution had a code of conduct related to AI, compared to just 18 percent of high schoolers.
At the state level, several states have issued guidance on how to approach AI in education, including California, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. In the Quizlet survey, 49 percent of teachers listed a lack of oversight as a top-three concern about AI in education.
“A reliable framework for AI use is necessary to ensure we’re applying this technology responsibly and thoughtfully,” Maureen Lamb, dean of academic technology and innovative pedagogy at a private boarding school in Connecticut, said in a public statement. “Clear guidelines help educators and students build a dynamic learning environment that plays to AI’s strengths in supporting learning outcomes.”
Whether their school has a policy or not, teachers reported that students ask questions about how to best use AI. However, the nature of the questions differs for different ages. According to teachers, more high school students (67 percent) than college students (52 percent) asked permission-based AI questions. The opposite was true for questions about proper use cases, with 59 percent reporting these kinds of questions in college compared to 40 percent in high school.
More teachers are also taking it upon themselves to teach about best practices. Nearly half of students said their teachers have talked to them about AI usage for school, up from 37 percent in 2023. As AI grows in use, more students are saying it helps them be more efficient, get learning support and personalize their learning experience. Teachers say it helps students feel more confident and learn new concepts faster.
Still, only 28 percent of teachers said AI positively impacted students’ overall learning experience. Teachers were also less likely than before to say AI will have a positive impact in the future — that number dropped from 51 percent in 2023 to 38 percent this year.
“Both students and teachers report that AI hasn’t yet resulted in a massive sea change for education,” Lomas said in a public statement. “But more incremental changes are actually a good sign. It means that the most important stakeholders in education, teachers and students, have a better understanding of how to deploy AI in a practical way, which builds on the foundation of education.”
