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Communication with students about AI

AI is increasingly integrated into how we live, work and study and the pace at which technologies evolve is likely to accelerate. As we prepare for present and future productive collaborations between multiple intelligences (human and artificial) we should openly work together to navigate digital transformations.

Within the culture of honesty, integrity and respect valued at Monash, everyone should be able to follow instructions around acceptable use of AI and feel comfortable asking for assistance. This includes asking questions and for clarifications as needed.

As we may have educated students about the ethics of using contract cheating sites, it is important to talk to students in clear, unambiguous ways in order to educate them about the ethical and intellectual implications of using AI technologies.

Learning how to use AI technologies appropriately is rapidly becoming part of academic and career development. Many students will increasingly be expected to use AI to generate content in their professions. It is crucial that their education plays a role in developing their critical thinking and reflective skills around the evaluation of a range of sources, including AI-generated material.

Actions

To do now: To help students understand what is and is not acceptable use of generative AI tools, it is crucial to clearly document and explain what is responsible use in each unit and each assessment task.

Carefully consider how you might integrate AI into teaching and learning activities and AI into assessment including guiding use through required AI statements and clear AI acknowledgement.

DEFINE

Set expectations for how generative AI will be used in your unit.

Consider and explain how learning about AI and/or learning with AI will be incorporated into teaching, learning and assessments in your unit.
Identify and document what cannot be used in each assessment task in the assessment details on Moodle. Clearly explain the pedagogical rationale for this position to students including the needs for humans to independently demonstrate certain skills and knowledge.
Refer students to Learn HQ on ethical use of AI and use a forum or classroom discussion about any ‘grey areas’.
Provide scenarios and openly discuss where AI use is and is not acceptable in the context of your evolving discipline.
Identify support resources on AI literacy and AI use to help students navigate the current transformations of education.

Some ideas for communication in assessment tasks guidelines

Scenario	Sample text
Students are given, or may create for themselves, text generated by Copilot. They are then asked to modify this text in relation to an assignment brief.	“Copilot or other AI tools may be used to generate an initial passage of text, but you must then change this text… Please provide both the initial AI-generated text and your changes (via Tracked Changes in Microsoft Word)”
Students use AI tools in learning about their topic and preparing an assignment, but may not include any AI-generated materials in the final submission.	“Copilot or other AI tools may be used for study purposes and to learn about your topic, but you may not include any AI-generated materials in the final submission. This includes copying and pasting text and then editing.”
Students use AI tools in learning about their topic and preparing an assignment, but all AI-generated materials included in the final submission must be clearly acknowledged.	“Copilot or other AI tools may be used for study purposes, to learn about your topic, and to develop your assignment. However, you must include a clear declaration of all generative AI tools used (e.g. ChatGPT, DALL-E, Grammarly, voice-to-text), how and where you have used them (e.g. ‘ChatGPT was used to generate an initial structure for the Introduction and Conclusion. I then edited this to correct factual inaccuracies and to strengthen the connection between the general principles of systems-based medicine and my local healthcare context’).

	EXPLAIN Explain the difference between ‘contract cheating’ sites and artificial intelligence. Contract cheating sites are blocked on the university network because their business model is based on asking students to commit academic misconduct. These sites buy and sell student work and answers to assessment. Artificial intelligence does not seek to maliciously create or share student work or university intellectual property. As with a site like wikipedia, it collates information that may or may not be correct according to inputs. Wikipedia data is input by people, while data put into a tool like ChatGPT trains the algorithms to refine its data collection. It is the use of AI that determines whether or not an academic breach has occurred. It is a students’ responsibility to ensure that they engage with generative AI ethically and responsibly and adhere to the assessment conditions for each assessment task.
	BRIDGE UNDERSTANDING Help students to understand how generative AI works, and what the ethical considerations and limitations are. Generative AI Large Language Models (LLM) are not a primary source of information, they are a language processing AI model. The information that a LLM generates must be reviewed critically for accuracy and appropriateness. Beyond protected enterprise tools provided by the university, free AI tools are commercially oriented and may use any data that is entered by users to train their algorithms. This data is not treated as confidential or secure (e.g. it is possible that the information students enter into ChatGPT could be reported to the University or shared with others). LLM’s are shaped by their training data and many have been trained on available content from the Internet and social media sources. There are ongoing debates about the intellectual property and copyrights of training data. Like many other things, AI training data contains and reflects societal biases. Critical awareness of potential biases is important for responsible use of AI and mitigating harms. AI technologies cannot process knowledge, think or feel in the same way as a human, and may not address cultural contexts and social nuances in their responses. Similarly, Gen AI systems are probability engines. Like elaborate autocomplete algorithms, they can guess the most likely outputs in a sequence or reference image, but do not generally understand what the words mean or symbolise.
	DISCUSS Engage in meaningful dialogue about learning and teaching and the implications of AI technologies. Discuss these technologies with students, including their possibilities and limitations in order to promote responsible and acceptable use. Content generated by artificial intelligence technologies reflects and contains societal biases. This bias comes about from the bias that is already present in its datasets as well as the way that it processes that data based on probabilities. AI can be a useful study tool, provided that students engage with its use and outputs critically, and are mindful of ethical and environmental considerations.
	EDUCATE Educate students about AI in the context of academic integrity, as well as more generally. This requires more than simply reminding students to complete or remember their academic integrity compulsory module. Building relationships with educators may reduce motivation to breach academic integrity. You can build relationships with students by teaching them about the need for academic integrity in the context of their units and disciplines. Some teaching points include: Claiming authorship over work that is not their own, without acknowledgement, is a breach of academic integrity. Part of academic integrity is being clear about how student work has been produced and not misrepresenting where information and ideas have come from. Assessment in a unit is designed to provide evidence of learning, reassuring the University and the community that future graduates have the knowledge and skills needed in their roles as future professionals and citizens. Academic integrity is about shared values as a University community and they apply to students and staff alike. These shared values form the basis for ethical interactions and the credibility of the degrees awarded by the University.