On the use of AI for learning
On testing Turnitin Clarity
Interview takeaways

While many higher education leaders worry for the future of authentic learning, students are telling a different story.

From late-night study aid to plagiarism minefield, we spoke with Tuna Şafak, a Business Information Systems student at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, to hear her perspective on the role of AI in education.

What you need to know

Student, Tuna Şafak, notes that an overreliance on standard LLMs leads to a false sense of mastery Instead, the most effective tools will guide learning rather than offload it entirely
Current institutional AI disclosure requirements can take more time than the assignment itself
Testing Turnitin Clarity showed Tuna how ‘guided friction’ and automated process tracking provide step-by-step writing support while championing real effort

On the use of AI for learning

Q. Where do you currently encounter AI in your everyday life as a student?

Everywhere. Everywhere! Gemini, Claude, Notebook LM - it's really cool. You upload PDFs and then it can create a podcast or an introduction video. And there's Gamma AI for presentations which automates so many things. And ChatGPT - I think that's the most common one, and most people even pay for the pro version.

I really cannot imagine my life without AI anymore.

The most important thing I use it for is time management. For students that can get overwhelmed, it gives you pointers to orient yourself so you can spend your time efficiently, actually learning.

Sometimes it’s overwhelming to be thrown into a new topic, but AI gives you guidance and a bit of safety. It’s like a tutor. AI can explain it or test you on it. And if there's an issue, you can use AI to talk about it if nobody else has capacity.

Q. Have you experienced any downsides to using AI for learning?

Using AI can lead to a bit of false confidence. If someone uses ChatGPT to do the work for them, they then can’t actually do the work themselves or explain it to someone.

Plus, I feel like some people are just happy with not having to do the work. They have a tool that works for them and they can just submit something and get their degree. It’s unfortunately what I’m seeing often these days. The AI does it, even an entire essay, and they don’t even read it, and I think that’s a big risk.

Q. Do students have enough guidance to understand how to use AI effectively and responsibly in their work?

Not at all. I’m a tech student and I think I’m quite lucky because I have professors who care about these things. But, I wonder whether professors have the necessary training to tell me how to properly prompt or question an AI output.AI is a probability machine. It thinks, “Okay, I have this data, and it’s probable that this output is right,” but it doesn’t know. We had that even with my university. We asked AI who the head of a department was, and the department didn’t even exist, and AI gave us an answer. So it's just important to be sensitive with it. But how can I be sensitive with it if I have never learned to be?I actually had a module about plagiarism and how to quote, and I think if other universities don’t have something like that, they should implement it. They should have workshops: how to use LLMs, how to prompt. Even if it was just an online course to watch, at least they have more awareness.

Q. Does your university require you to disclose AI use in your assignments?

In my computer architecture module, my teacher wants to assess the questioning part, the actual mental thinking part. Afterwards, we have a colloquium where you present and the teacher asks questions to verify you actually understood.

I use AI for referencing, but at some point, you ask yourself: “How much of this work is actually mine? Should we just copy-paste the ChatGPT length of our chat to professors, so they have total transparency?”

In the laboratory, we had to document what we were doing, and that was part of your grade. The professors hope that at least you did the thinking on how to approach and manage the subject. It’s not only 'what source did I use?'; it’s literally an insight into your brain and how you made decisions.

Q. What can universities do to help students adapt to AI?

I would love universities to provide a course on how to use AI. Because it's inevitable. Everyone is going to use it or is using it. If you can’t change that AI exists, then it’s important to make people see the value. And that is by teaching them how to work with it, not demonising it.

And in the workforce, it's not going to be any different. Even our professors tell us that you might get replaced. So it’s going to be an advantage if you know how to use it.I would love universities to give individual access to AI. Many use ChatGPT, but ChatGPT is limited, so you need to buy the pro version. You don't have enough tokens to use. If I code, it's gone after 30 minutes, I have to wait another day.

If somehow a deal could be made where AI can be made accessible to more students, that would be insanely cool.

On testing Turnitin Clarity

Turnitin Clarity is a composition space built for education featuring an AI assistant with built-in guardrails. It helps students learn to collaborate with AI rather than letting it write for them, and empowers instructors to incorporate AI into written assessments with full process visibility.

To evaluate how it works in practice, Tuna was provided with a test account to experiment with Turnitin Clarity for one of her assignments.

Q. Can Turnitin Clarity show whether a student copy-pasted text from ChatGPT?

I was very curious about how much professors would be able to see on their side after I’d copied and pasted into Turnitin Clarity from ChatGPT. And you could literally see everything. How much time, how many times you inserted stuff and where a thousand lines had miraculously appeared from.If my teacher asked me, ”Did you write it yourself?” I can prove it. It can be proven instantly if it was my work or not. In case someone is being accused of plagiarising, or not writing the work themselves, it's really easily proven that it's their own work.

Q. How does Turnitin Clarity’s built-in AI assistant differ from a generic LLM?

I saw Turnitin Clarity as a game where I can test my limits and annoy it a bit. The first question I asked was, “Could you write this essay for me?”. And it said, “I'm not doing that.”With normal LLMs, you just get an instant response, and it's done. So Turnitin Clarity gave a little bit of resistance which I wasn't used to, but it's not a bad thing, just different. It was a challenge but I liked it, because I like to use my brain and I like to grow. I got encouraged to do it myself and to keep going. Whereas, if you use a normal LLM, the risk is way too high to just abuse it.

Q. Did using Turnitin Clarity change how you approached your coursework?

Usually, I use AI to save time but it took me way longer with Turnitin Clarity. Instead of saying, “I can't help you,” it provided me with steps I can follow, which I liked. You are encouraged to start writing.I think (like with anything in life) starting is the hardest part, but if there's something telling you, “It's okay. I'll give you a step to follow,” and you do it, then you get encouraged, then you want to do more.It was also really easy for me to understand. User-friendly. Not like ChatGPT giving me 100 million lines of things I have to read. I liked that when I was writing, I could ask it for feedback, or I could highlight a paragraph, and I could reference it in the system directly.And if progress stops, I can say to it, “I'm overwhelmed.” A normal LLM would be more soothing. But Turnitin Clarity says, “This is the next step.” I like the way I have structure. I have guidance.I was encouraged. I gained confidence. I knew that I would finish the work.

Interview takeaways

From our conversation with Tuna, it’s clear that students like her are looking for more guidance when it comes to AI: not as a shortcut, but as part of a nuanced and future-ready approach to learning. When institutions overlook that piece of the puzzle, it can often mean missing out on a valuable teaching opportunity.

Preparing students for success in the age of AI means:

Actively guiding them on how to use AI responsibly and critically, from writing prompts to questioning output
Taking a holistic approach to AI and authentic learning – for students like Tuna, they’re not mutually exclusive, but a complementary team
Gaining real visibility into the learning process, so students can be confident that original work is recognised and responsible AI use can be supported

Discover how Turnitin Clarity can help your institution pave the way for student success – and support authentic learning in an AI world.