What is the University of Glasgow’s position on use of GenAI?
The University of Glasgow (with Russell Group peers) believes Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools are potentially transformative as well as disruptive. They increasingly feature in academic and professional workplaces, which means that our students will graduate into an GenAI-augmented world. The university has a responsibility to prepare students for this world, providing space to experiment with, and understand the potential of, GenAI in an ethical way. Consequently, rather than seek to prohibit students’ use of these tools, we want to support students in learning how to use them effectively, ethically, critically, and transparently. The university welcomes the opportunity to consider more meaningful assessment approaches and ways for students to develop critical thinking, analysis skills, decision-making and good judgement through their use of GenAI. An over-focus on catching cheating is misplaced effort – instead we must adapt our thinking to embrace new technology to enhance opportunities for learning.
Whilst these technologies are attractively powerful and easy to use, they can also provide misleading or incorrect information, and can negatively impact students’ learning as they can appear to offer shortcuts that reduce the need for development of foundational knowledge and skills as well as critical engagement with that knowledge, all of which are is key to the deep and meaningful development of attributes associated with subject specialists.
Additionally, staff and students need to be aware of the difference between reasonable and appropriate use of such tools, and at what point their use might be regarded as creating an unfair advantage. The University of Glasgow’s policy on what constitutes academic misconduct can be found here.
Thus, it is important for students to understand that they should not use GenAI tools to generate assessment content and submit as if it was their own work. Rather, they should understand how GenAI might be used and how to acknowledge its use.
