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Next Roundtable Meeting
Date: Tuesday, October 24th, 2023
Time: 12h00-1h00 PM ET
Join us on October 24th, from 12:00PM to 1:00PM ET, for our next AI Roundtable meeting, focused on Student perspectives. During this session, a panel of students from across the country, representing a wide range of perspectives, will share their opinions on GenAI in higher education. The panel will be facilitated by our team at Higher Education Strategy Associates. We’ll share with you more information about our panelists in the upcoming weeks. Register now for free to save your spot!
If you missed our last AI Roundtable on Pedagogy and curriculum, you can watch the recording here.
Policies & Guidelines Developed by Higher Education Institutions
Tags: Guidelines, Academic integrity, Governance, Canada
McGill University’s (Canada) Subcommittee on Teaching and Learning’s Recommendations to the Academic Policy Committee on Generative AI for teaching and learning at McGill are as follow: 1) that the Academic Policy Committee endorse a list of five principles that constitute an operational framework for McGill to integrate GenAI into the academic mission; and 2) that the Office of the Provost and Vice-Principal Academic provide clear mandates and resources to identified units and groups to develop and implement roadmaps to operationalize the principles. Said principles include building AI literacy, for GenAI to play a positive role in the accomplishment of the academic mission, for instructors to have autonomy to decide whether they will use an approved GenAI tool in their teaching and assessments, for instructors to comport themselves according to the higher standards of academic integrity in their use of GenAI, and for student to maintain academic rigour.
Tags: Guidelines, Academic integrity, Canada
Simon Fraser University’s (Canada) guidance on Using Generative AI As A Student states that “GenAI tools such as ChatGPT can be used constructively to support learning but when used inappropriately can interfere with meeting the learning objectives that you must satisfy to receive your SFU credential.” The guidance states that students must check with their course instructor to know if they are permitted to use GenAI. It also provides information regarding how to cite GenAI tools.
Tags: Guidelines, Academic integrity, Pedagogy, Canada
University of Calgary’s (Canada) resources on Artificial Intelligence include information about AI literacy, as well as guidance for instructors and students. The resources also provide guidance as to how to create successful prompts on GenAI tools, as well as to how to cite the use of AI tools.
News & Research
Liang, W. et al. October 3rd, 2023.
This research paper presents the results of two large-scale studies analyzing the quality of GPT-4’s feedback on scientific papers. When comparing GPT-4’s generated feedback with human peer reviewer feedback, the overlap in points raised was comparable to the overlap between two human reviewers. They also conducted a prospective user study with over 300 researchers. More than half of the users found GPT-4 generated feedback either helpful or very helpful, and above 80% found it more beneficial than feedback received from at least some human reviewers. The study also identifies limitations of using GPT-4 to provide feedback, such as the fact that GPT-4 tends to focus on certain aspects of scientific feedback and struggles to provide in-depth critique of method design. In conclusion, the authors mention that LLM and human feedback are complimentary to one another, and that LLM feedback “could benefit researchers, especially when timely expert feedback is not available and in earlier stages of manuscript preparation before peer-review”.
Swaak, T. The Chronicle of Higher Education. September 27th, 2023.
This article presents many tools that can be used when reviewing papers considered for publication in academic journals. For instance, tools can help provide more reader-friendly synopses, discern if some papers are missing relevant research, identify gaps in studies, produce a language score, produce suitability scores to identify in which journals a paper may best fit, or even scour publicly available information to search for potentially undisclosed conflicts of interest. It also highlights that while more and more policies and guidance are being developed surrounding the use of GenAI to submit academic work or to write research papers, policies around using GenAI for peer-reviewing are still missing. The publishers contacted by the author affirmed that while AI tools are increasingly being used in the review process, they are never the sole decision-makers: “editors remain responsible and accountable for the editorial process and final calls”.
Raudaschl, A. Times Higher Education. October 13th, 2023.
The author of this article argues that LLMs “have the potential to revolutionize the way we search and discover information”: “In today’s fast-paced academic landscape, scholars face a rapidly expanding ocean of research articles, so they need search tools capable of more than just fetching documents. The future of search is not just about finding what we seek; it’s about generating deep insights that help us leverage this vast sea of knowledge”. The author states that LLM, when paired with trusted academic databases, could help easily “sift through massive databases, draw connections between disparate fields and even suggest new avenues of research”.
Fédération des cégeps. October 6th, 2023.
This brief is presented to the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation and the Quebec government’s Commission de l’éthique en science et en technologie as part of the consultations on the use of GenAI in higher education. The Fédération des cégeps recommends the following: 1) For the government to develop guiding principles for the integration of AI in higher education that will draw inspiration from global reflections and actions, while retaining Quebec’s specificities. For the college network to be involved in the development of these principles. 2) For the ministry of higher education to elaborate an AI competency framework, that span from preschool to higher education. For the college network to be involved in the development of this framework. 3) For the ministry of higher education to provide funding to support colleges in the development of initiatives related to AI, most specifically professional development of staff. Professional development should both demystify AI and its ethical issues, and demonstrate how to use GenAI responsibly for the benefit of the staff’s work. 4) For the college network to be supported in its adaptation of study programs to the new professional needs brought about by the democratization of AI.
Dianati, S. and Laudari, S. Times Higher Education. October 9th, 2023.
The authors of this article share 25 prompts for GenAI to assist with administrative tasks. These include supporting with student email correspondence, writing letters of recommendation, assisting with job interview preparation, providing feedback on resumés or cover letters, creating reading lists, providing support for student with special needs, providing feedback on student assignments, proofreading and editing copies, developing learning objectives, and creating study plans.
Jones, C. and Zinshteyn, M. CalMatters. October 12th, 2023.
Post-secondary institutions don’t all agree on whether prospective students should be allowed to use GenAI in their application essays. While some institutions are clear that they would immediately reject the application of an applicant that had used GenAI for any part of their application, other institutions permit students to use GenAI in application essays in limited form, for example to brainstorm content or to proofread. Common App, a college application tool vastly used in the US, included a restriction on substantive AI use in applications as part of its fraud policy – without defining what ‘substantive’ means.
Coffey, L. Inside Higher Ed. October 12th, 2023.
AI has dominated many conversations at Educause, an annual education conference aimed at technology leaders. The conversations all seemed to tend towards the similar conclusion of being cautiously optimistic about the technology. Many mentioned the need for institutions and educators to try experimenting with the tool. “Just try it; if every educator just tried it themselves, the conversation would become much richer”, said Annie Chechitelli, chief product officer at Turnitin. At Purdue University, a GenAI system can already provide advice related to technical documentation. Soon, they will implement another AI system that will learn from the university’s public website to be able to answer students’ questions. The article concludes that the importance in setting policy around GenAI is clarity: “faculty members are ‘panicked’ about whether administrators will support them when there is an AI problem”.
Mollick, E. One Useful Thing. October 12th, 2023.
In this blog, Ethan Mollick answers some of his most asked questions about GenAI. His FAQ covers AI detection, how to best use AI, data privacy and copyright issues, as well as the evolution of GenAI. He shares an interesting advice: “My rule of thumb is you need about 10 hours of AI use time to understand whether and how it might help you. You need to learn the shape of the Jagged Frontier in your industry or job, and there is no instruction manual, so just use it and learn”.
More Information
Want more? Consult HESA’s Observatory on AI Policies in Canadian Post-Secondary Education.
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