Academic Integrity,  Assessment and Evaluation,  Generative AI

Recommendations for Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence

July 28, 2023 /

These recommendations were provided in June 2023 in response to a request from Deans to provide guidance to the campus community with respect to ChatGPT – a generative artificial intelligence tool that can produce content that is difficult to distinguish from that produced by humans.  Some links and terminology were updated in July 2023 and in October 2023.

Advice in this area is evolving and questions and suggestions are invited for future updates of this resource (contact susan.bens@usask.ca). 

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On May 1, 2023, the European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI) published recommendations on the ethical use of artificial intelligence in education.  The ENAI recommendations are summarized, paraphrased, re-ordered, and grouped below, along with some supplementary information. 

 

Proper Use 

  • Do not list GenAI tools as authors:  Authors must take responsibility and be accountable for content and an AI tool cannot do so. 
  • Recognize limits and biases of GenAI tools:  Inaccuracies, errors, and bias are reproduced in AI tools in part because of the human produced materials used for training.    

 

Teaching Practice 

  • Accept use of services, sources, tools where the form rather than the content is influenced:   Examples may be proofreaders, proofreading tools, spell checkers, thesaurus, Grammarly. 
  • Educate students on ethical use:   Without learning about the tools, students are more susceptible to misuse which may constitute academic misconduct.   Students should be educated on: 
      • “The purpose of all activities related to learning and assessment and why they should develop (e.g., write) their individual/group work assignments. How to develop their ethical writing and content production skills.” (p. 3) 

Also serving to educate students, institutional policies and course level instruction should: 

      • “Guide the users on how to correctly and transparently acknowledge the use of AI tools in an assignment, dissertation, thesis, paper, article, book chapter, computer programme, graphic, artwork and other types of artefact.” (p. 3) 
  • Educate educators on ethical use:  Engage with professional learning for the development of relevant learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessment strategies.   

Definitions of Academic Misconduct 

  • Define specific rules at the course level.  USask institutional level regulations address unpermitted assistance and inadequate attribution in definitions of academic misconduct.  Because course-level contexts differ, educators are advised to make their expectations with respect to GenAI explicit.  The following umbrella definition by the ENAI may be used or adapted for syllabi or assessment instructions: 
      • “Unauthorised content generation (UCG) is the production of academic work, in whole or part, for academic credit, progression or award, whether or not a payment or other favour is involved, using unapproved or undeclared human or technological assistance.” (p. 2) 

 

Reference: 

Foltynek, T., Bjelobaba, S., Glendinning, I. et al. ENAI Recommendations on the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence in Education. Int J Educ Integr 19, 12 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-023-00133-