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AI tools: AI at Newcastle

This guide looks at generative AI tools - how to use them and considerations around their use.

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The University's position on generative AI tools

For detailed information on using generative AI in your assessments, see Study essentials - AI in Assessment. This page is an important read as it includes explanations of the categories for the acceptable use of AI in your courses.

The Using AI page in this guide includes information on how to acknowledge your use of generative AI in assessments.

The following PDF slides (April 2024) present the University’s overarching position on the use of AI by students. Scroll on right:

Language editing, such as Grammarly, can be useful to improve the expression of academic writing. However, it’s always best to check with your course coordinator on whether such tools are allowable in a particular assignment.

In particular, GrammarlyGo (the generative Artificial Intelligence tool embedded within Grammarly) should only be used if your Course Coordinator has permitted use of generative AI in the assessment. If you are not sure, make sure you ask your Course Coordinator.

If AI is not allowed in a particular assessment, you should make sure that the GrammarlyGo feature is turned off in your account customisation settings.

Turnitin’s Artificial Intelligence Detection may flag use of Grammarly (or GrammarlyGo) in written submissions, and drafts of your work can be a useful part of any discussions around your learning and assessment. If you are using Grammarly or similar tools, make sure that you always retain drafts/versions of your work as evidence of how you have constructed your final submission.

See How do I turn on AutoSave? and View previous versions of a file for Microsoft products such as Excel, PowerPoint or Word. Or, you could save a copy of your original draft under a different file name and use this copy with Grammarly so that the AI changes are restricted to a distinct version.

 

Students: View the Academic Integrity Module

Staff: View course guidance on SharePoint

Microsoft Copilot access for staff and students

The University provides free access for staff and students to the premium version of Copilot; sign in using your University Microsoft account details. Copilot can also be accessed via the icon in the Edge browser (top right).

Copilot draws from GPT-4 and is connected to the internet so its responses have more chance of using up-to-date sources. Copilot also provides links to where it obtained information, which can aid in checking for authority and accuracy (this is important to do!). Image generation is also possible via Copilot's integration of DALL-E 3.

The enterprise tool provides protection for your data and does not use your prompts to train the model, nor does it save any of the prompts or responses.

It's important to check for the 'Protected' icon top-right of window to ensure that you're logged in through the University's access:

Protected icon in MS Copilot

If you hover your mouse over this icon it should read: "Protected Your personal and company data are protected".

To learn more, see the DTS knowledgebase article Microsoft Copilot: getting started

Watch a free short (35 minute) LinkedIn Learning course: Streamlining Your Work with Copilot

The University's AI Advisory Group is currently creating guidelines for staff use of AI at the University. In the meantime, using an approach similar to that recommended for students would be advisable:

  • Check your School or College's position or recommendations on using AI tools for teaching or research.
  • Researchers should also check the positions of funders and publishers (see AI for Research for more).
  • Check any generated AI outputs for inaccuracies, including fake information, citations and quotes.
  • Provide acknowledgement whenever you have made use of an AI tool and in what way (model behaviours for your students).

If you have any questions around use or ownership, reach out to a Teaching or Research Liaison Librarian or the University's Copyright Advisor. Academic Learning Support (ALS) may also be able to provide guidance around use of AI in assessments.

Looking for slides for your course that explain the University’s position on the student use of AI? A slide deck created by the University's Artificial Intelligence Working Group is available to download from SharePoint (PPT, requires login).

The University's AI Working Group and LDTI have created support information for staff wanting to use AI in their courses, including how to communicate your expectations to students and tips for identifying AI-generated content - see the tab in this box for more.

Further reading article: Developing evaluative judgement for a time of generative artificial intelligence (Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, April 2024)

With a particular focus on assessment and academic integrity, but also considering innovative opportunities for use of artificial intelligence across all aspects of teaching and learning, the University is working to develop and refine our approach. We want to ensure that that students are equipped to take advantage of the opportunities presented by current and future artificial intelligence tools, and that this is done ethically and in a way that is consistent with the University’s Academic Integrity principles.

The University's Artificial Intelligence Working Group have developed the following resources:

AI not allowed in assessment image
AI allowed in a limited capacity image
AI allowed in assessment image

 

Learning Design and Teaching Innovation (LDTI) have the following pages available for staff:

How can we improve?

We'd love to hear your feedback on this guide. If you think changes could be made, or more information added, please go to our feedback page and let us know.