Take5 #142 We need to talk about GenAI

Using GenAI in higher education responsibly: A checklist and discussion cards for critical engagement

Generative AI (GenAI) is a growing part of academic life. Despite its increasing use and presence, student surveys typically report uncertainties and concerns about its use and about the support they receive.

Whether it’s drafting summaries, exploring ideas for teaching, or rephrasing text, GenAI tools can feel powerful and, at times, overwhelming. But with this power comes responsibility and a need to develop habits of use that are critical, reflective, and sustainable.

This #Take5 is brought to you by Sue Becks and Peter Hartley who argue that educators and students need to come together to talk openly about the GenAI in order to build a culture of critical inquiry, agency and ‘ownership’ as the implications for us all are still emerging.

We need to talk about GenAI

We have longstanding interests in the actual and potential uses of computer technology to support learning and interaction, ranging from Peter introducing students to the wonders of speech recognition, desktop publishing and multimedia in their early (and rather clunky) incarnations to Sue’s co-invention of #LTHEchat the weekly Learning and Teaching in HE chat which has celebrated its 10^th anniversary in October 2024 and continues to develop on BlueSky. She has a long interest in the use of social media for learning in HE and worked with students on a project called SMASH to create and openly share multimodal resources shared on her blog.

We started to talk to each other about GenAI when ChatGPT first became generally available at the end of 2022 and we recognised that this had fundamental implications for all our practices. Our conviction that everyone in higher education should be aware of GenAI’s potential and limitations has been expressed in a series of webinars and keynotes, starting with webinars for SEDA and continuing with keynotes and workshops for universities, both international and UK, and several publications, including the SEDA/Routledge book (now in paperback) Using Generative AI Effectively in Higher Education: Sustainable and Ethical Practices for Learning Teaching and Assessment. We feel it is important to get both educators and students together to openly talk about when and why they might use GenAI or indeed choose not to, in order to build a culture of ‘inquiry and sharing’ which is so important with a technology which is so new to all of us and where the critical applications and implications are still emerging.

Over these last two years, we have had continuing conversations with both students and colleagues where they tell us they’re interested in trying these tools but don’t know where to start, or they worry about using them inappropriately. They were often disappointed by resources which presented an ‘over-enthusiastic’ view of GenAI’s capabilities and either ignored or ‘skipped over’ the significant issues which users can experience, not to mention the broader social and environmental issues.

We looked for resources that would encourage users to approach GenAI with the broad analytic and critical perspective it deserves, and which were both practical and flexible. That’s exactly why we developed two simple resources which are designed to provide a comprehensive opportunity for critical analysis and debate, and which do not pretend that we currently ‘know all the answers’. These are:

The Generative AI Checklist – a practical framework for guiding your use of GenAI.

The Generative AI Discussion Cards – prompts designed to spark reflection and conversation in workshops, seminars, or peer learning groups.

Both resources use the same general structure, so they complement each other. 

We chose cards as the format for use in workshops as the two sides of each card provides an opportunity to use each side for a different type of information or question, as we illustrate below.

They are both free to use under a Creative Commons licence, and you can adapt them for your own context. If you do adapt/use them, we would be very interested to learn about your experience to see if we can improve the resources.

Why do we need guidance tools?

When educators and students first encounter GenAI, several challenges quickly appear:

Overwhelm and uncertainty

The sheer range of what GenAI can do often makes new users unsure of where to begin. Should you ask for summaries? Use it for lesson ideas? Try it for writing support? Without a framework, it’s easy to either use the tool superficially or avoid it altogether.

Misinformation and “hallucinations”

GenAI outputs can look convincing but probably contain errors, missing citations, or even fabricated references. Without prompts to cross-check and evaluate, users risk relying on flawed information.

Over-reliance and dependency

Because the tools are fast and responsive, it’s tempting to lean on them too heavily. This can undermine the development of essential academic practices like critical reading, synthesis, and independent writing. These are practices that students have to engage in for themselves as part of their own active learning processes. Learning itself cannot be outsourced to the machine. Alongside developing student awareness of what they need to do to actively learn, guidance tools can help set boundaries. GenAI should support scholarship, not replace it.

Ethical and environmental blind spots

Questions of bias, responsible use, and the environmental cost of GenAI computation are often overlooked. Structured prompts encourage educators and students to pause and ask: “Should I use GenAI here? What are the implications?”

Together, these challenges highlight the need for simple, structured scaffolds and resources that can make it easier to use GenAI critically rather than uncritically.

The Generative AI CHECKLIST

The checklist is built around nine principles (C-H-E-C-K-L-I-S-T):

• Clarify context/objectives – be clear about your goals.
• Hone your requests – craft precise prompts.
• Evaluate responses – critically assess accuracy, bias, and relevance.
• Cross-check & verify – always validate outputs.
• Expand your knowledge – use AI as a starting point, not an endpoint.
• Link concepts – connect ideas across subjects.
• Implement responsibly – consider ethical and environmental impacts.
• Study skills development – strengthen, don’t weaken, learning habits.
• Track & log progress – reflect and build a record of insights.

Think of it as a compass: not telling you what to do with GenAI but reminding you how to approach it thoughtfully.

Full size version of the Generative AI checklist is available to download from here: https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.27022309.v1

The Discussion Cards

The set of nine cards each focus on a principle as a discussion point, starting with what it is you are wanting to achieve.  

They work especially well in small-group discussions, where participants share how they might apply the ideas in their teaching or research. They can also be used in academic skills sessions with students, encouraging them to think beyond the surface level of what the GenAI provides.

Each card introduces one principle from the checklist on the front and a few open questions on the back. For example:

Principle	Open questions
Evaluate Responses	“Why is it important to critically assess AI-generated content?” “How can you identify potential biases in GenAI responses?” “What are the most likely errors to look for?”
Implement Responsibly	“What ethical considerations should be taken into account when using GenAI?” “How can over-reliance on Generative AI affect learning habits?” “How can GenAI use be balanced with environmental concerns?”

The set of nine cards can be downloaded as a PowerPoint file from here: https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.29410013.v1

How you might use them

Workshops and seminars
Some alternative models with students in small groups:

• Each group reviews the set or selected cards and identifies any points they wish to clarify or discuss further
•  All groups explore scenarios using cards selected by the facilitator to arrive at a consensus on how they should use the principles.
• Students working in pairs or trios could develop their personal action plans to respond to the cards and compare their ideas
• Each group has a focus on a different card and identify specific practical implications
• Each group has to select the card (or perhaps 2 or 3) which they think is the most challenging or difficult and explain why. The whole group discuss possible solutions or coping strategies

Self-reflection
A few suggestions:

• Users can work through the checklist individually to guide their own experiments with GenAI tools (perhaps to use as the basis for a reflective report they can submit for feedback?).
• Users can use the checklist to develop their own personal action plan for how (and how much) they intend to use GenAI in future

Try them out

The Generative AI Checklist and Discussion Cards are available to download here:

Beckingham, S. and Hartley, P. (2025). The Generative AI CHECKLIST discussion cards. National Teaching Repository. https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.29410013.v1

Beckingham, S. and Hartley, P. (2024). The Generative AI CHECKLIST. National Teaching Repository. https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.27022309.v1

Both are shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, so feel free to adapt, remix, and share.

Final thoughts

Generative AI isn’t going away. As educators, we have an opportunity to model critical curiosity showing students and colleagues not just how to use these tools, but how to ask the right questions about them.

We’d love to hear how you might use the checklist or cards in your own context. What conversations could they spark in your classrooms, research groups, or team meetings? You can reach out via email or Bluesky (see our bios for details). 

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