UVic Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Commons guides university toward responsible A.I. integration
Photo by Annilea Purser
On April 4 2024, UVic Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Commons launched a new workshop available for students, faculty, and instructors called “Using Generative A.I. for Student Research.” The workshop aims at informing students on how to use generative A.I. (GenAI) tools and discusses the university’s A.I. use strategy.
The GenAI workshop was developed by a team of librarians, including Christian Schmidt, UVic’s Special Projects Librarian, and Rich McCue, the manager of the Digital Scholarship Commons.
The workshop, which is hosted online, is available for all undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty and instructors. It has 12 core learning objectives, including: developing an understanding of GenAI and its ethical considerations, what strategies researchers can undertake to use GenAI amidst ethical and safety concerns, how to evaluate the reliability of findings, what the UVic policies are, and how to leverage library resources.
McCue notes that the skills learned in the workshop should be applied only when an instructor permits it.
“That’s a big caveat that we reinforce several times in the workshop, because we don’t want to help students get into trouble because a particular professor does not allow generative A.I. for doing a literature review, for example,” said McCue.
According to McCue, his motivation for developing the workshop came from what he witnessed as an instructor. While teaching EDCI 336 (Technology Innovation in Education), McCue noticed that his students — who are future teachers — were interested in using GenAI in their schoolwork while also aware of how they might handle it in their future classrooms.
“I could see the students thinking, oh, this can be really useful to me and my schoolwork. And then a couple of minutes later, they’d be going, oh, but I’m going to have a classroom full of high schoolers or middle schoolers that will have access to this. How am I going to manage that and still meet learning objectives?” said McCue.
The workshop fits into UVic’s position on A.I. use that was released in December 2023. Rather than outright banning the use of GenAI, UVic has embraced the ethical use of GenAI tools (GAITs). According to the position statement, GAITs offer new ways of learning and teaching, and will be important to understand for students entering the workforce.
McCue notes that certain faculties have taken to encouraging GenAI use to prepare students for their careers.
“From what I’ve heard and observed, the business faculty is really trying to encourage instructors to use generative A.I. where appropriate, just because their people are going to be seeing that in business when they get out,” said McCue.
UVic has further expressed a commitment to supporting faculty and instructors on how to navigate GenAI use in the classroom, including a list of tips to promote academic integrity amongst students who choose to use GAITs.
Dr. Michael Ziegler, a sessional instructor at MacEwan University who recently defended his dissertation on the positive and negative effects of A.I on society, emphasizes the importance of strong pedagogical approaches for instructors wishing to integrate assignments where students can use GAITs.
“It can’t just be random,” said Ziegler. “It has to be embraced in terms of pedagogy. That is, it has to actually make sense in the class. Like, why are you doing this? Is it useful for the assignment in terms of learning AI? Is it useful for the assignment in terms of thinking it can help students in some way?”
Ziegler warns that instructors who only integrate GenAI assignments as a tactic for deterring students from cheating — such as by asking students to submit ChatGPT’s response to their assignment prompt — may cause a culture of distrust in the classroom.
“You’re starting the semester with a lack of respect for students and their capacity to do work,” said Ziegler. “So it has no pedagogical value and has no place in the classroom in my mind.”
Ziegler noted that GenAI use comes with many ethical concerns, including GAITs’ reproduction of biases, land use, ecological impacts, data collection and security practices, and more.
“All of [the ethical factors] need to be considered and only add to the argument that we can’t just use it for the sake of using it, there has to be some amount of value. Otherwise, you’re just kind of engaged in this circular reality of committing harm and recommitting harm in various ways,” said Ziegler.
McCue says that the library workshop can help individuals navigate the ethical concerns related to when GenAI use is appropriate.
The workshop is currently being expanded upon, and more GenAI courses are slowly being released — including one that specifically looks at GAIT prompt engineering. The next “Using Generative A.I. for Student Research” workshop is taking place in June.
