Amanda Sturgill receives grant to explore students’ use of generative AI

A faculty member in the School of Communications will study how artificial intelligence is changing how students learn and how teachers teach.

Amanda Sturgill, an associate professor of journalism, has received an $850 grant from Kappa Tau Alpha, a national honor society for journalism and mass communication. She will use the grant to study why college students use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) for communication work and whether they tell others when they use it.

The grant will support a project called “Is it apathy or anxiety? A pilot study of student motivations to use GenAI for communication work.” The study will explore why students use AI tools and what they think these tools do to their communication skills.

“As professors grapple with how to help students learn to use AI in appropriate ways, understanding why and how they use the tools is an important first step,” Sturgill said.

For the study, 15 to 20 students will complete a survey and keep a daily diary of how they use AI for five days. Sturgill will then interview them to learn about their experiences with the technology and how they think it affects their communication skills.

The grant will pay for gift cards to help recruit students for the study. Sturgill expects to present the findings at a communication conference in fall 2027. The small first study may also help her prepare for a larger research project.

Sturgill has been the faculty adviser for Elon’s Kappa Tau Alpha chapter since it was first established in 2022. She also advised a chapter at Baylor University while she taught there.

Since 2003, Kappa Tau Alpha has awarded more than $44,000 in grants to chapter advisers to support research in journalism and mass communication. Sturgill is one of three grant recipients this year. The other recipients are faculty members at Louisiana State University and San Diego State University. Their projects will study how animal videos may help reduce stress and how communities get local news and information about civic life, respectively.

Kappa Tau Alpha was founded in 1910 at the University of Missouri. It recognizes strong academic achievement in journalism and mass communication and has 100 chapters across the United States.