Centre for Engineering Education Blog

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Attitudes Towards Generative AI: A Study with First-Year Computer Science Students

Varvara Papazoglou is a Teaching Associate in the School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield. In this post Varvara shares the work she led to investigate student perceptions of AI that found growing confidence, excitement and acceptance. The work was presented at the 18th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (ICERI 2025).

The study started during the academic year 2023-24 and was intended to track how the perceptions, expectations, and technical understanding of our undergraduate students shifted as they gained direct experience with GenAI technologies. With a team that included Alex Lucas and Prof. Rob Gaizauskas, we redesigned the first two lab sessions for a first-year module called Machines and Intelligence so that they included a practical introduction to Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). Our study spanned two academic years, and tracked how the perceptions, expectations, and technical understanding of students shifted as they gained experience with GenAI technologies . To measure this, we invited volunteer participants from both cohorts to complete two online surveys, one before and one after engaging with the GenAI-focused curriculum of the module.

These questionnaires were administered three to four weeks apart, using unique IDs to match participant responses while preserving their anonymity. Structurally, they consisted of 13 core questions common to both iterations. Questions identified the specific GenAI tools students utilised and their typical purposes for doing so with, and 5-point Likert scales were used to evaluate viewpoints on GenAI’s performance, the identification of AI-generated content, and general feelings of excitement or concern. The perceived impact of AI on future careers, potential job obsolescence, and the ethics of GenAI use in university and workplace settings were explored. To ensure a comprehensive analysis, most of these questions included non-mandatory open-ended sections for qualitative insights, concluding with a final opportunity for participants to offer additional comments.

Testing Turing

The first lab focused on a practical adaptation of the Turing Test.

Students were split into groups of 6-7, paired with another group to play the roles of “interrogator” (C in Turing’s original formulation) and “interrogated” (both A (the man) and B (the woman/machine)) interchangeably.

To maintain anonymity and remove visual cues, all communication happened through a shared online document. The “interrogated” groups were tasked with choosing whether to provide the answers of an actual team member or to use ChatGPT or Gemini to produce human-like responses. The latter required students to act as prompt mediators; for example, they might instruct the model to adopt the persona of a 20-year-old first-year computer science student while keeping answers within a specific word count. This exercise forced students to grapple with the actual capabilities and flaws of these models. For their assessment, students submitted reflections on the following:

●      As interrogators, whether they successfully identified the machine and what specific linguistic cues or mistakes led to that conclusion.

●      As the interrogated group, whether they successfully deceived the interrogators into making the wrong identification, and whether this success was attributed to the AI’s capabilities or their own careful prompt engineering or other factors.

●      Whether the Turing Test remains a valid benchmark for machine intelligence, based on their experience with the given task.

The second lab shifted towards the ethical and practical implications of AI in Higher Education. After reviewing online University resources regarding guidelines and policy on the use of GenAI, students analysed and critically evaluated 10 short descriptions of use cases on GenAI in Higher Education, split into two groups of five, involving use by educators and five use by students, ranging from AI-generated lecture content to code authoring with GenAI.

Groups debated the advantages and disadvantages of these scenarios, helping them develop an informed, critical perspective on how to use these tools responsibly throughout their degree.

Confidence, Excitement and Acceptance

To understand how these labs changed perspectives, we conducted pre- and post-task surveys, analysing 33 matched responses from the 2023-24 and 2024-25 cohorts. The results revealed the following in student literacy:

●      Initially, students were fairly confident that GenAI could handle complex tasks. After the labs, this confidence actually dropped (from an average of 3.8 to 3.5 on a 5-point scale), suggesting that students gained a first-hand understanding of the inherent “hallucinations” and limitations.

●      Student confidence in their ability to identify AI-generated content (based on cues such as unnatural or “over-polished” text) rose slightly, from an average of 3.2 to 3.5. Overall, as indicated by their responses to our survey questions, most participants had some experience and a good understanding of cues that can reveal GenAI output before our teaching interventions. However, among participants with no prior experience, greater confidence in recognising AI-generated material was observed.

●      Interestingly, despite becoming more aware of the risks, students’ willingness to use GenAI in their studies increased (from 3.7 to 4.3). In addition, in their comments, students emphasised that, because GenAI tools and technologies are here to stay, the priority must be acceptance and education, so people are aware of how to use them effectively to maximise utility while minimising risk.

●      While the media often portrays AI as a threat to jobs, our students largely viewed it as a transformation. Many saw the obsolescence of certain tasks not as a negative, but as an opportunity for new roles and increased productivity. Interestingly, students expressed similar feelings of excitement and acceptance for GenAI use in both Higher Education and the workplace.

Conclusion

Our findings suggest that early, structured engagement with GenAI, tied to subject-specific material, can foster more balanced and informed perspectives among students. Students with more awareness of risks and limitations seem to be more optimistic of the impact and potential of GenAI. However, we are mindful of the modest scope of our current research. Given the relatively small sample size and the specific context of our introductory module, these results serve as preliminary insights rather than definitive conclusions. We have identified areas for improvement, particularly in deepening students’ awareness of ethical and societal risks while reducing the likelihood that students feel overly confident about their ability to identify and manage AI-generated content without necessarily being aware of the full range of risks.

Varvara Papazoglou is a Teaching Associate in the School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield. Her research interests include Artificial Intelligence, Music Information Retrieval, Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing, as well as Educational Research in Computer Science.

When citing this work, please use the following citation:
Papazoglou, V. (2026). “Attitudes Towards Generative AI: A Study with First-Year Computer Science Students” Centre for Engineering Education Blog, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. June 2026. https://ceesheffield.co.uk/2026/06/09/attitudes-towards-generative-ai-a-study-with-first-year-computer-science-students/

June 9, 2026
From Red Line Week to Engineering Education Scholarship Week: Why Taking Time Out Matters

The Centre for Engineering Education is an initiative to support the educational aims of Engineering at The University of Sheffield, and open to all, and especially the many and varied people who support these aims. In this post Emma Kenny-Levick, a Senior Administration Officer at The University of Sheffield and super power behind the CEE blog, shares how scholarship led her to challenge her assumptions, and to make time for reflection that changed on her own practice.

When I first joined Multidisciplinary Engineering Education (MEE), a recurring block of events appeared in my calendar titled “Red Line Week.” I didn’t really know what it meant. I knew it was something to do with scholarship and personal development, two terms that, at the time, felt distant from my day‑to‑day role. I was new, busy and focused on learning the practical realities of my job. Taking time out to think about scholarship didn’t feel relevant.

I was a professional services member of staff so why was scholarship relevant to me?

So, like many others across the Faculty of Engineering might have done, I ignored it. I didn’t read the emails. I didn’t consider attending the sessions. Not even when hot refreshments, pastries and lunch were offered.

If only I’d known then what I understand now.

With hindsight, I can see clearly what Red Line Week was always intended to be and why it has become such a valuable part of our engineering education community today, now known as Engineering Education Scholarship Week (EESW).

Drawing a line through the working week

Red Line Week was developed and championed by Dr Matteo Di Benedetti, Senior University Teacher in MEE and Co‑Director of the Centre for Engineering Education (CEE). The idea was simple: draw a red line through your work calendar and use that protected time to focus on your own development.

At the time, I associated development with formal training courses or mandatory requirements, not with taking space to think, reflect, write or talk with others about how I did my job and how I could do it better.

And I certainly didn’t see how scholarship related to me.

“What is scholarship and what has it got to do with my role?”

For me, scholarship felt abstract. It sounded academic, theoretical, something for university teachers, not for someone in professional services.

It wasn’t until my third year in MEE that something shifted. I looked more closely at the programme and spotted a session on effective evaluation, something directly relevant to my work. I decided to attend.

That was the moment the penny dropped.

I realised that scholarship wasn’t about doing something extra or becoming someone different. It was about developing ideas to improve practice. About taking what you do every day and looking at it more critically with the aim of making it better. Scholarship wasn’t separate from my role, it strengthened it.

Space to think, not just sessions to attend

What I came to understand is that EESW isn’t just about workshops or keynotes, though those matter. It’s about creating space.

Space to sit in a room with like‑minded people.
Space to reflect on what works (and what doesn’t).
Space to talk openly about teaching, learning, evaluation, identity and confidence.

Over time, the programme has grown from strength to strength. What began as Red Line Week has evolved into a rich programme that now includes:

●      Keynotes and workshops on engineering education, scholarship, academic identity, writing and open practices

●      Engineering and Teaching Shorts (EATS)

● Education Themed Networks (ETNs) bringing colleagues together around shared interests

●      Dedicated scholarship spaces for focused thinking, discussion and writing

●      Sessions delivered in partnership with colleagues from across the University, including Elevate and Student Support

Crucially, EESW welcomes academics, researchers, GTAs, professional services and technical colleagues. It recognises that improving engineering education and the student experience, is a shared endeavour.

Seeing the value of time taken out

Now, when I see EESW in my calendar, I see it very differently.

I see the benefit of stepping away from routine tasks to think about what I do and how I might do it better. I see how confidence grows when people realise that their experiences and ideas matter. And I see how investing time in staff development feeds directly into stronger teaching, better support services and richer learning for students.

I also see something else: permission.

Permission to slow down.
Permission to reflect.
Permission to invest in yourself without feeling that you should be doing something else.

In a sector that often feels pressured and reactive, having structured, protected time like this is not something to take for granted.

Why I wish more people would give it a try

If you’ve ever looked at EESW (or Red Line Week, as it once was) and thought, ‘this isn’t for me’, I understand that reaction as I had it too.

But my experience has taught me that taking time out for personal and professional development isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. It sustains good practice and strengthens not only how we work but how we work together.

Engineering Education Scholarship Week is, at its heart, about people: their ideas, their growth and the space to develop both.

If you’re curious about what that looks like in practice, here are a couple of highlight videos from past programmes:

●      Why Engineering Education Scholarship week and the benefits of attending

●      EESW July 2025 Highlights Video

●      EESW January 2026 Highlights Video

And if you’re on the fence next time it appears in your calendar, my advice is simple: draw the red line and see what happens.

When citing this work, please use the following citation:
Kenny-Levick, E (2026). “From Red Line Week to Engineering Education Scholarship Week: Why Taking Time Out Matters” Centre for Engineering Education Blog, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. May 2026. https://ceesheffield.co.uk/2026/10/27/redlineweek/

May 8, 2026
Finding the Right Engineering Path

In this personal blog, undergraduate student Maddy McGuire reflects on how an uncertain start, brought on by Covid and virtual course searches, led to discovering the perfect course – Bioengineering (now called Biomedical Engineering) here at The University of Sheffield. Maddy shares how her course, team projects and a transformational placement at Mercedes AMG have shaped her technical skills, confidence and career aspirations.

When I was looking for courses during my A-level years, Covid stopped me from attending open days, with only virtual tours available. I had limited information about Bioengineering at the University of Sheffield, but had always loved maths and chemistry and wanted to find a way to apply those subjects to the real world. I found out the course offered me a way to change the future of healthcare without having to undertake a medical degree or an intense amount of biology. Through the course, I quickly realised that my passion was in healthcare technology, rather than the biological functions themselves.

With Bioengineering being an interdisciplinary course, there were many different routes and modules available throughout the years. I have studied Biomedical engineering, but also automated control systems, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, materials science and even business. This breadth of course choice has allowed me not only to explore possible routes, but also refine and specialise in those that I found the most interesting. I have thoroughly enjoyed group projects, where I worked with different engineers with distinct expertise. Although challenging at time, submitting a completed project as a team was an incredible and rewarding, and helped me improve my interpersonal skills.

With Bioengineering being an interdisciplinary course, there were many different routes and modules available throughout the years. I have studied Biomedical engineering, but also automated control systems, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, materials science and even business. This breadth of course choice has allowed me not only to explore possible routes, but also refine and specialise in those that I found the most interesting. I have thoroughly enjoyed group projects, where I worked with different engineers with distinct expertise. Although challenging at time, submitting a completed project as a team was an incredible and rewarding, and helped me improve my interpersonal skills.

A Year in Industry

As an additional part of my course, I undertook a year in industry at Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, that was both enriching and personally formative. I oversaw the creation, build and testing of plans, presented them to colleagues and managed resource allocations to ensure that all hardware was distributed correctly. If changes were required, I coordinated with many different departments, including manufacturing to schedule these modifications and ensure completion under strict time pressure. I compiled shortage reports and burndown charts which help to track parts against their due dates. During build days, I would have to communicate between the building and engineering teams, release Build Requests and ensure that each team was on hand to support whenever needed. My role was pivotal in finding causes of unit failure and resolving these issues.

My placement gave me professional and technical skills. I learned to communicate for effectively, and by coordinating teams have developed my confidence, time management and leadership skills. I gained experience of industry relevant software including Excel, SAP and PowerBI. However, the most important skill I developed was my organisational skills, with constant shifting priorities and a fast-paced environment, I often had to adjust my plans last minute to achieve the goal within the deadline.

My placement gave me professional and technical skills. I learned to communicate for effectively, and by coordinating teams have developed my confidence, time management and leadership skills. I gained experience of industry relevant software including Excel, SAP and PowerBI. However, the most important skill I developed was my organisational skills, with constant shifting priorities and a fast-paced environment, I often had to adjust my plans last minute to achieve the goal within the deadline.

When preparing to undertake this placement, I focussed on taking business modules throughout my course. These courses gave me insight into what to expect as part of a company as large as Mercedes and the technical skills to be able to execute my role in the operation with success.

Life as a Biomedical Engineering Student

With a limited number of Bioengineering courses available across the UK, I was pleased to find that Sheffield offered one. With the top-rated student union in the UK, Sheffield appealed to me as a social and lively university – and I have not been disappointed. Furthermore, having virtually toured Endcliffe and Ranmoor accommodation, they appealed strongly to me as a place to live as I started my degree. With the correct course, vibrant social life and top-notch accommodation, Sheffield was the perfect place for me to Study Bioengineering.

For me, the most enjoyable aspect of Sheffield university has been the social aspect, and the variety of ways to engage with other members of the community. From my course to sports and societies, I have been introduced to such a wide variety of people, many of which have become my closest friends. Many of my friends have graduated, but they are lifelong friends, and we still maintain contact and see each other whenever we can. A particular highlight of the social and sporting calendar was watching the varsity Ice Hockey match, which quickly became a tradition as a reliably fun event.

Now looking forward, I will be applying to programme management and logistics roles in different industries, including healthcare. This will allow me to understand how different roles function within different sectors and see the differences in their supply chain management. All of this will give me the insight I need to decide which sector or industry I will want to specialise in and start my career progression with that sector in mind.

When citing this work, please use the following citation:

McGuire, M. (2026). “Find the right engineering path”. Centre for Engineering Education Blog, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. November 2025. https://ceesheffield.co.uk/2026/10/27/findingtherightengineeringpath/

March 3, 2026
Open Educational Resources (OER) in Engineering at Sheffield

Why make education openly accessible? Don’t worry, Tom Howard will help us by explaining it’s about equity and quality.

Why Make Education Openly Accessible?

The benefits of using Open Educational Resources (OER) for teaching and learning in Higher Education are well established [1]. The key benefit to learners is the unrestricted (and zero-cost) access to learning materials, regardless of age, geographic location or economic situation. There is evidence to suggest that students perform better when enrolled on courses that make more extensive use of OER too [2].

There are many benefits to HE institutions as well, the obvious one (again) relates to economics: moving away from high (and ever increasing) cost, subscription-based journals to open access alternatives is a significant cost saving. But there are other important benefits: making educational resources openly available for all can help to showcase the teaching that a University provides, and helps to promote institutional reputation.

There are also considerable benefits for teaching staff. OER can help to ease workload pressures since instructors can take existing open resources and either use them as-is, or adapt them to their own needs, rather than having to re-invent the wheel and write materials from scratch. Material created or adapted by instructors can help to promote individual reputation too.

What are we doing at Sheffield

In light of all these benefits, in December 2022, the University of Sheffield established new policy to encourage the use and creation of OER by university staff. In Engineering, we are really keen to engage with this, and it’s become one of the key themes of the Centre of Engineering Education (CEE). We believe that we can provide a unique take on it: Practical Engineering.

We’re fortunate to have the Diamond, the home of practical teaching for the Engineering Faculty. We believe that the teaching that we develop here is unique and exciting. As such, we want to share this with the wider community to showcase what we do, to promote the great work of our staff, and to enthuse prospective students by giving them an insight into what a degree in Engineering at the University of Sheffield will be like.

How are we achieving it?

In order to support this, one of the key things we have done is to put together a website to showcase the open access educational materials currently produced by staff across the Engineering Faculty: https://sites.google.com/sheffield.ac.uk/open-eng

We really want to see this grow, and we are promoting this across the faculty and encouraging staff to contribute as much as they can of their own work. We’re also promoting the idea of OER more generally, and encouraging staff to think about how they could use OER in their own teaching (and why it’s beneficial).

One of the key issues around OER relates to perceived quality [3]. We are (of course) confident that the resources that we create here at Sheffield are of high quality, but how do we convince others of this? Having the University Logo attached to the site helps with this, and we are fortunate to be part of an institution with a good reputation, but there is certainly more that we must do to guarantee and assure readers of the high quality of each and every resource that we share.

In academia we are very familiar with the concept of peer review, yet often in the context of OER this simply isn’t feasible [4]. There are various other techniques we can employ to help with this though. Each resource on the site includes the name of the primary author, and a link to their University profile page. Through this, viewers can view our academic credentials, to provide confidence that we are qualified to write about and teach a given subject.

Please help us!

Ultimately, the most effective way for us to demonstrate quality in our resources is through user feedback. And that’s where you come in!

The site includes a mechanism for user reviews, and we would really value any feedback that anyone may have on any of our resources. Any review is of huge value, but particularly those from other qualified authors (both internal and external to the university) would be really valuable to us.

Please browse our resources and provide us with feedback if you can. Ultimately an OER is never really final. We want to make sure our teaching is as good as it can be, and would welcome any suggested improvements. And finally, if you make use of any of our resources for your own teaching or learning then please let us know!

When citing this work, please use the following citation:

Howard, Tom. (2025). “Open Educational Resources (OER) in Engineering at Sheffield”. Centre for Engineering Education Blog, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. October 2025. https://ceesheffield.co.uk/2026/10/29/open-educational-resources-oer-in-engineering-at-sheffield/

[1] Swain, B.K., Pathak, R.K (2024). Benefits and challenges of using oer in higher education: a pragmatic review. Discov Educ 3, 81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-024-00142-6

[2] Kit W. Cho, Vahe Permzadian (2024). The impact of open educational resources on student achievement: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Educational Research 126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2024.102365.

[3] Anderson, T., Gaines, A., Leachman, C., & Williamson, E. P. (2017). Faculty and Instructor Perceptions of Open Educational Resources in Engineering. The Reference Librarian 58(4), 257–277. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763877.2017.1355768.[4]

C. M. Kelty, C. S. Burrus and R. G. Baraniuk (2008). Peer Review Anew: Three Principles and a Case Study in Postpublication Quality Assurance. Proceedings of the IEEE 96(6) https://doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2008.921613.

October 15, 2025