This #Take5 is brought to you by Chrissi Nerantzi, Professor in Creative and Open Education at the University of Leeds. Chrissi shares a real-life scenario of a student’s use and declaration of AI and asks how you would react if one of your students declared their use of GenAI. Chrissi provides some useful questions to reflect upon and shares some openly licensed crowdsourced collections if you would like to learn a little bit more about emerging GenAI supported creative practices together with critical perspectives.
What follows actually happened. At this stage I have many questions, which made me think.
An undergraduate student tells an educator that they pro-actively used generative AI to support their learning and the educator shows that they are somehow perplexed that the student includes a statement regarding their GenAI use in their assignment. What do we do with this? What makes it unimportant or irrelevant to the educator? When a student openly shares that they have indeed used GenAI without being prompted and explains how and why, educators can appreciate and acknowledge it in a positive way. Is it important to also think about the student and what it took for them to be open and transparent about how they used GenAI?
In the age of GenAI many students may feel vulnerable and fearful of admitting that they have used or are using such tools as what they predominantly hear is that their work will be submitted to an AI detection tool and that they may be in danger of academic misconduct. Students don’t want to be called cheaters, but they have been and are asked to prove their innocence (Gorichanaz, 2023). Also they can probably sense that many of their tutors still feel uncomfortable about GenAI and don’t really know how to handle it. After all it is new to most of us in the context of learning and teaching. This uncertainty may keep students away from GenAI or keep what they are doing with it under the radar. I think it is probably more keeping such activities under the radar than staying away from GenAI. We are nothing without trust, we know this! Students are proactive and are reaching out for help and sometimes it does come in the form of GenAI. We definitely want our students to be curious and have an inquisitive mind, so actively exploring and experimenting should be something that is at the heart of their university experience.
The inclusion of an AI statement demonstrates the student proactively taking responsibility for the use of AI. Isn’t this what we would like all our students to do? Not just students, all of us? My thoughts take me to what Ahenkorah (2020) calls “accountable spaces”. She moves our thinking from safe and brave spaces (they are problematic) to accountable ones and says characteristically “Accountability means being responsible for yourself, your intentions, words, and actions. It means entering a space with good intentions, but understanding that aligning your intent with action is the true test of commitment” (Ahenkorah, 2020, online).
How would other educators react if a student would let them know that they have used GenAI in their assignment without being told they have to state it and used it for their learning in a resourceful way. How can we make it work for students and educators?
This particular student is now suspecting that they have lost marks because of this statement and won’t acknowledge that they have used GenAI to support their learning in their next assignment, even if they did.
Many institutions have introduced GenAI guidelines. At the University of Leeds we are currently using a GenAI traffic light system (red = no GenAI, orange = can use GenAI in supportive role as defined by the educator, green= must use GenAI). While this system is useful, there are many grey areas and a lot of room for interpretation. The easy way seems to be to go with “red” and not allow any use of GenAI.
Some questions we need to consider:
1.How can we, instead of ignoring, blocking and policing, foster critical and creative exploration during the learning process in harmony with GenAI?
2. What academic referencing conventions do we need to acknowledge the use of GenAI and model good academic practice?
3. Is it about time to rethink how we define “originality” and what we mean when a student claims “this is my work”?
The following openly licensed crowdsourced collections may be valuable for educators and students who would like to learn a little bit more about emerging GenAI supported creative practices together with critical perspectives:
Abegglen, S., Nerantzi, C., Martínez-Arboleda, Karatsiori, M., Atenas, J., Rowell, C. (Eds.) (2024) Towards AI literacy: 101+ creative and critical practices, perspectives and purposes. #creativeHE. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11613520
Nerantzi, C., Abegglen, S., Karatsiori, M. & Martinez-Arboleda, A. (Eds.) (2023) 101 creative ideas to use AI in Education. A crowdsourced collection curated by #creativeHE. Graphic Design by Bushra Hashim. CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8072949
References
Ahenkorah, E. (2020) Safe and Brave Spaces Don’t Work (and What You Can Do Instead), 21 September 2020. https://medium.com/@elise.k.ahen/safe-and-brave-spaces-dont-work-and-what-you-can-do-instead-f265aa339aff
Gorichanaz, T. (2023) Accused: How students respond to allegations of using ChatGPT on assessments, Learning: Research and Practice, 9:2, 183-196, https://doi.org/10.1080/23735082.2023.2254787
Bio
Chrissi Nerantzi (NTF, CATE, PFHEA) is a Professor in Creative and Open Education in the School of Education, a Senior Lead of the Knowledge Equity Network and the Academic Lead for Discover and Explore at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. Chrissi is a GO-GN alumna, the founder of the international #creativeHE community and has initiated a range of further open professional development courses, networks and communities that have been sustained over the years.