Artificial intelligence (AI) and assessment

Please find below a statement on the University’s position on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools when producing work for assessment as part of your course.

It is important that you are able to produce work that you can take pride in, and that will help you fulfil your further study or career aspirations once you complete your studies with us. It might seem that generative AI tools can be used to produce reliable content for assessment, but they have limitations and have been shown to produce errors, inaccuracies and biases. It is also important to emphasise that learning is a journey, and that relying on AI tools to produce assessment outputs prevents you from developing the skills you will need in the workplace.

We want to make sure you understand the opportunities and limitations posed by AI tools – such as ChatGPT and Midjourney – and how you can use them, where appropriate, in a transparent manner.

Our position

The University’s Academic Board, which includes representation from Brighton Students’ Union and your School, has agreed that you can only use generative AI in assessment when authorised. Therefore, using these tools is not permitted unless your module leader has given you permission to do so and incorporated it into the design of the assessment. If you are unclear about this, please ask your module leader.

Where use is permitted, you will be required to declare the contribution of AI tools to your work and attribute where appropriate. You will be given guidance on how to acknowledge your use of these tools as part of the assessment brief. Through this approach, we remain committed to promoting academic integrity and ethical practices.

Clarifying our policies and the academic misconduct process

Our current student regulations for academic misconduct (section F in GEAR) are based on the importance of attribution and citation in the spirit of promoting academic integrity. These have now been updated to include a new category of misconduct, Commissioning, which explicitly covers the inappropriate use of AI tools without acknowledgement.

The academic misconduct process will continue to operate as before, with AI tools now included in our regulations as part of this process.

Resources

To support you in navigating this area, we have updated the University’s academic integrity resource: All My Own Work. This highlights the principles and standards you will be expected to follow in your assessments. Ultimately, we want you to be able to creatively express your knowledge and demonstrate your understanding of the subject you are studying.

We also give you free access to Cite Them Right, a comprehensive online guide on how to reference.

Looking ahead

As a University we will continue to evolve our approaches to assessment, embracing methods that mirror the types of tasks you might encounter as professionals and in applied settings. We will also continue to have meaningful conversations with you and our staff about this topic. Academic integrity will feature as an item on the agenda of School Education and Student Experience Committees in the summer term where Course Reps, as part of their membership of these committees, will be able to gather the views of their fellow students and feedback on the University’s approach.

If you have questions about the implications of these technologies for your assessments and whether their use is allowed, please contact the relevant module leader.

Best wishes,

Dr David Walker PFHEA, Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education and Students)

Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash