AI in Teaching

NEW: A vision for education and skills at Newcastle University: Education for Life 2030+

Embedding digital skills and competencies in teaching and learning is a key aim of Newcastle University’s education strategy, and this extends to the discipline-specific use of AI. Understanding the potential uses of AI, as well as its limitations and ethical issues, will support us in using these tools effectively – as well as thinking critically about their output.

This page provides guidance to help you consider the many ways AI can be embedded in your own teaching and learning strategies.

Uses of AI in education

AI technologies can be used to improve education and the student experience in a number of innovative and positive ways, and can help complement and streamline your current teaching practices. Examples of AI use in teaching from the literature and wider sector include:

Assisting educators in creating high-quality, engaging educational content. AI can be used to generate lesson plans, create practice problems or quizzes, or assist with research by generating summaries or analysing data.
Helping colleagues generate additional examples to illustrate key points for teaching, providing multiple explanations of the same idea or threshold concept.
Assisting colleagues and students with research by generating summaries of academic papers/technical manuals and analysing complex data sets (within the bounds of our Ethical use of AI and data guidelines outlined below). AI can also translate text, quickly summarise complex concepts, and confirm details of mathematical assignments.
Helping colleagues and students get past "blank page anxiety" and writer's block when developing written materials, by providing a basic structure to work from.
Generating images and rapidly prototyping designs, allowing colleagues and students to explore and critique different ideas quickly, easily and collaboratively.
Generating spoken audio and music from text prompts, making it easy to create audio podcasts or video voice-overs without the need for expensive recording devices or complex editing software.
Speeding up computer code development and testing/debugging.

101 creative ideas for AI

A crowdsourced collection of ideas that explore the possibilities and limitations of using AI in learning, teaching and research.

AI in Practice

LTDS are maintaining a live document of ideas and positive approaches to using AI in education.

Gen AI has the potential to enhance productivity across industries. While that may affect some workers more than others, it will change ways of working for almost everyone.

McKinsey Quarterly

Supporting student use of AI

Creating an open dialogue between academic colleagues and students, and establishing a shared understanding of the appropriate uses of generative AI tools in education, is critically important. Alongside incorporating AI into teaching approaches, it is essential for colleagues to make the time to help students explore the possibilities for using general and discipline-specific AI tools in their studies, and to foster their ability to think critically and reflectively when assessing AI information sources.

Explain to students what constitutes good and bad academic practice in your discipline. Talk to them in clear, unambiguous terms about your expectations for AI use and acknowledgement. Be open about responsible and ethical AI usage, and encourage your students to ask questions, seek help, and clarify AI-related concerns. Provide scenarios where AI-use is and is not encouraged, point students towards our AI guidance (below), and help them to understand the strengths and weaknesses of AI and the need for critical evaluation of outputs.

Declaring your own use of AI

We encourage our students to use AI as an assistant, a tool to think with them and not for them, in honest, ethical and defensible ways. Colleagues wishing to use AI in their teaching and assessment materials should consider these principles themselves, and by declaring their own use of AI, encourage students to do the same. Whenever you use AI, be transparent about it, and explicitly acknowledge and document its contributions to your work.

Consider also that you are the expert in your field, and students expect to learn from you – not from AI. Students value human interaction, personalised educational experiences, and the richness and diversity of original learning content. Use AI to enhance your teaching, not replace it.

Example colleague AI acknowledgement statement

The following is a general example of declaring professional AI use, which you are encouraged to copy and customise for your own context whenever you use AI outputs.

I/We acknowledge the use of [AI tool(s)] to [state use].

Ethical use of AI and data

Colleagues should endeavour to help students use AI in safe and secure ways, whilst making concerted efforts to protect privacy and data rights, mitigate bias, and ensure equity of access for all. When considering an AI platform such as ChatGPT for teaching and learning purposes, ask:

What data source(s) is the AI platform trained on, and what biases and inaccuracies may be associated with that information?
Are there any copyright or intellectual property issues associated with that training data?
Does the platform have a data protection and privacy policy – will sharing and uploading information lead to harm or impact anyone’s freedoms or rights?
What information, in terms of provided prompts and files, will students be given?
Will uploading information to the platform infringe any copyright or intellectual property rights, or break the terms of our licencing agreements?
Do I have permission to give students this information, and are they allowed to upload it to an AI platform?
Will all students be able to access and use the platform without restriction and without needing to provide personal, sensitive or confidential information? Consider that some platforms have age requirements which may affect stage 1 students.
Are my students happy to use the AI platform, and are they trained on how to get the most out of it?
As far as reasonably possible, will no student gain an advantage by accessing more advanced AI tools from behind a paywall?
What are the potential societal and environmental impacts of using the platform, and will your students be comfortable with these?

Chatbots

AI technologies such as ChatGPT enable the easy creation of personalised chatbots, which use natural language processing to understand and respond to free-text requests and student queries. They can be trained on custom data and information sources, and guided to respond in specific ways. While powerful and attractive at first sight, they can be unreliable in practice and difficult to keep up-to-date; they are rarely a substitute for timely academic contact and clear, up-to-date and easy-to-access Canvas course information. A variety of module-specific chatbots, used in an uncoordinated manner across a programme, can also be confusing for students.

Newcastle University’s DiscoverAI working group is currently exploring the use of Chatbots and how – if recommended – they can be integrated with current systems and processes. In the meantime, colleagues are encouraged not to use them with students unless there is a compelling reason to do so.