Starting in the fall, faculty at McMaster University will be able to use AI tools like ChatGPT in their courses. Photo credit: Pexels/Matheus Bertelli
Hamilton’s McMaster University has announced that their professors will be allowed to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) tools into their courses starting in the fall 2023 semester.
The university also released guidelines that must be followed by professors and students who use AI.
AI tools are able to write entire essays if given a prompt, amongst other uses. Generative AI tools can produce text, images, video, sound and even code. The most well-known tool is ChatGPT which was released in November 2022.
Since then, the university says there has been “an explosion of AI.”
The guidelines come after the university launched a “Task Force on Generative AI in Teaching and Learning” in May.
Because AI is evolving and the guidelines will be re-evaluated based on the fall semester, they are considered provisional for now.
The standards were released ahead of schedule and include various statements for professors to use when drafting syllabi for their courses, rubrics to grade students’ knowledge of AI if professors integrate the skill in their courses, and the university’s desired citation format for AI tool usage.
The guidelines were developed by McMaster’s MacPherson institute, a body which seeks “to explore, enhance, support, and recognize teaching and learning experiences at McMaster.”
Erin Aspenlieder, associate director at the MacPherson Institute, said that the university’s goal with the release of the guidelines “is to help people understand where [AI] technology is right now, how it may change educational approaches and how instructors can bring it into the classroom to enhance student learning, if appropriate.”
At the same time, the task force said that they acknowledge AI technology may not be appropriate for every class or program and students “should assume the use of generative AI is prohibited unless explicitly outlined by the course instructor.”
The university advises that AI be incorporated only if it offers meaningful learning, rather than “inclusion for the sake of novelty.”
Additionally, the guidelines warn that professors should discuss with students the limitations of the technology, specifically that it sometimes produces factual inaccuracies and contains biases.
One of the other big concerns that professors have was that the tools can easily be used to write essays and other assignments.
The university says that existing academic integrity policies address AI. Academic policy 18(c) reads that it is an offence “knowingly to submit academic work for assessment that was purchased or acquired from another source.”
However, in terms of plagiarism detection, the university says that AI plagiarism detection software is “not recommended at McMaster” at this point in time but “may be used in the future.”
The university says that some detectors produce false positives and students have “not consented to the sharing of their intellectual work through the tools.”
“It is also unclear how the material submitted to the third-party detectors is retained or used,” says the university.
More information about the new AI guidelines can be found on McMaster’s newly updated “Generative Artificial Intelligence in Teaching and Learning” webpage.
Aspenlieder said the task force will be consulting with staff and students throughout the fall semester to get additional feedback and make changes to the guidelines as needed.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
