Using Generative AI at the University

Every day, more and more people use Artificial Intelligence (AI) for everyday tasks related to work and entertainment. But what about the use of AI in education? This paper aims to investigate whether university students (and future engineers) use Generative AI tools for their academic obligations and to determine whether these tools can contribute positively to the development of their Computational Thinking skills. For this reason, a case study based on a STEM educational approach in a Mechatronics course is presented. It was investigated to what extent the students who attended the course used and utilized AI tools such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, Copilot, etc., for the completion of their STEM projects. The results showed that a vast majority of students responsibly use the AI tools in their everyday academic tasks, but these do not substantially affect their Computational Thinking skills. While the existing literature abundantly confirms the above, further research needs to be done in the future in the direction of the correlation of the tools with Computational Thinking.