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02/04/2024

Where does Artificial Intelligence belong in student life?

Written by Meltem Baysal Caliskan , Matt Bondea, Casey Buss, Edward Li, Victoria Pearson

Where does Artificial intelligence (AI) belong in student life? The International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) tasked our small group of students from around the globe with tackling this question. Although far from experts, we each had experiences with this challenge of ethically integrating AI into academic life that prompted our interest in joining this discussion.

The diversity of our group was our strength, with members from Canada, Nigeria, and Türkiye, to name a few. We held frequent meetings to collaborate our thoughts and experiences with AI in our academic journeys, realizing several interesting points that united us despite different geographic contexts.

Recognizing the value of these insights, as the International Day of Action Student Working Group, we produced an infographic highlighting our findings regarding AI and Academics. We hoped that universities across the globe could share our work to provide a better understanding of the place AI has in student life.

The first commonality we discovered was how our different universities incorporated AI into their policies. Although they differed to some extent, depending on the institution, faculty, or personal instructor, they all spoke to the same values upheld by the ICAI. Whether one person’s instructor pushed for honesty in academics or another university’s policies worked to establish a sense of responsibility for one’s learning, they all reflected those ICAI values and established a culture of integrity.

This culture of integrity, we realized, was a fundamental aspect that could help define where AI belonged in student life. Perhaps unknowingly, we each participated in different ways to promote this culture in our universities. Some of us had helped run activities on campus that related to AI and its ethical use in student life, while others had helped to review a written guide for students related to the use of AI in coursework within their faculty.
These experiences taught us the importance of establishing a culture of academic integrity and we wanted our infographic to reflect the insights we had made. We wanted to develop and publicize a clear-cut list of Dos and Don'ts about the use of AI that would allow students to understand AI’s place in their lives and how they might individually, and ethically utilize AI.

Over several weeks, as a working group, we developed an infographic around this list of Dos and Don'ts and the goal of providing students with a clear sense of how to promote a culture of academic integrity. In doing so, we were able to clarify where the increasingly accessible and ever-evolving technology of AI might belong in students’ lives. Moreover, we did it in a way we felt was truly for students, by students.

Looking back, this project was some students’ first chance to work with peers from other universities and internationally. It helped us to explore our questions and curiosities about what constitutes appropriate use of AI. We drew on these experiences when speaking at a Student Panel event for the International Day of Action for Academic Integrity, and dare to say, it shaped how we saw ourselves as student citizens too.

Note: This blog post was authored by students. ICAI takes pride in highlighting student voices as students are a key stakeholder in higher education and the promotion of academic integrity. ICAI does not endorse or advocate for any position or statement made.

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