ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, THE ULTIMATE OPPORTUNITY OR THREAT TO THE ESSENCE AND INTEGRITY OF EDUCATION

Whilst the advent of the ever-growing technological era has come with multiple benefits that make everyday life comfortable and easy, hidden threats are now emerging in the education arena.Seemingly, the issue of Artificial Intelligence, has posed unlimited threats and opened doors of machine-based learning.Based on this premise, the quest of this study was to find out the extent and how students at institutions of higher learning use Artificial Intelligence to enhance their scores in given assignments, online tests and examinations.Two main research questions guided this inquiry: a) What are the students' perceptions about Artificial Intelligence in the light of enhancing their tertiary education?; and b) How do students at institutions of higher learning use Artificial Intelligence during their learning?A total of 45 Bachelor of Education final year students drawn from three different universities from three countries: Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe participated in this inquiry.Similar semi-structured questionnaires, oral group interviews and in-depth interviews were the data collection instruments used across the different countries.The TPACK theoretical lens was used as the main framework that guided the data collection and analysis.The collected data was analysed thematically for any emerging themes from a deductive to an inductive approach, through the technique of coding.It emerged that the digital age is posing threats and opportunities in educational settings.Opportunities in education include improved content representation and delivery to students, enhanced self-learning from AI scaffolding, immediate assessment of learning and feedback for learning efforts.The threats included academic dishonesty that involved the unethical misuse of AI to write online summative assignments, tests and examinations for inflated false scores that do not measure the academic competences of students.The need for plagiarism software that could effectively detect AI plagiarism emerged.The idea of avoiding online summative assessments and the use of sit in writing options could help in regaining the integrity of education in the context of tests and examination scores.Educators ought to be exposed to multiple training opportunities to improve their technological competences so that they can effectively monitor and manage the unethical use of AI by students.