Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having an increasing impact on our daily lives. More and more news is emerging about the potential applications of AI and the expanding functions of generative AI. In parallel, the role and challenges of AI in education are also gaining momentum. There are many articles and proposals on how AI, in particular generative AI and ChatGPT, can be used in education to support both students and teachers in their work, for example in brainstorming, generating problem sets, synthesising resources, improving papers, assessing student performance, searching for information. The question arises: what is the role AI plays in statistical education? AI is typically used in advanced statistics courses, in the forms of learning algorithms, machine learning and neural networks. In addition, some courses include the prompting of generative AI mainly for generating Python, R codes.

In our presentation, we will introduce our solutions, ongoing developments and practical experience of the use of AI in our introductory statistics courses. One example is the Statbot, a chatbot which supports the course organization and can help the instructor in answering frequently asked questions from students. Based on the uploaded course materials, we generate test sets, lesson plans and use AI to improve teaching methodology, improve the instructors' teaching methodological skills, and help with student assignments and homework.

Experience has shown that AI cannot take over, but can effectively support the work of teachers in solving repetitive technical tasks, reducing administrative burdens, brainstorming and creativity. Overall, the workload of instructors is not reduced significantly, but they perform different activities as part of their duties: problems are formulated where the use of AI may arise, questions are formulated and prompts are generated. Inaccurate answers to questions also impose on instructors the tasks of continuous monitoring, learning and refining the use of the system, and teaching the learning algorithm. AI-based solutions in the teaching methods or context of a given subject can enrich lessons and tasks. From the students' perspective, the current generation of university students prefer quick solutions, and they are keen to use generative AI. One potential danger is that the vast majority of them do not check the correctness and timeliness of the answers themselves, therefore students' attention should be drawn to such issues, and consequently, their AI literacy should be developed indirectly during the statistics courses as well.