Combatting use of AI by New Brunswick university students — or not

Like it or not, artificial intelligence is here to stay and many universities are trying to figure out how to live with it — and even take advantage of it. 

"It's not going away," said Toni Roberts, director of the Purdy Crawford Teaching Centre at Mount Allison University in Sackville. 

"So if it's not going away, how do we handle it?"

The key, he said, is to use it "to our advantage" rather than letting students use it to avoid learning and putting in the work. 

Roberts, who teaches in the sociology department, has looked at the research into the use of AI by students. He said more than 80 per cent of students use generative AI. 

Yet, "only about 30 per cent of assignments, papers, what have you, are being identified by faculty as having used generative AI," he said. So a lot of them are slipping past professors. 

One of the fears, said Jennifer Tomes, the dean of science and graduate studies at Mount Allison University, is that AI interferes with the development of critical thinking skills.

"The reason that a professor creates an assignment or a particular piece of writing or whatever it may be is because we want the students to go through the process of doing that, to develop the skills to do that particular kind of thing," she said.

Tomes agrees there are ways for students to effectively use AI. She said some employers even expect students to learn how to use it "appropriately and ethically."  

Roberts said professors have the "academic freedom" to decide how — or whether — to use AI. 

Some have set parameters around the use of AI, while others have banned it completely, said Tomes, the university's academic integrity officer. 

While Mount Allison doesn't have a formal policy about AI, it is working on a set of guidelines or best practices, and it does have an academic integrity policy that says students aren't allowed to cheat or misrepresent information.

So if they're caught using AI in a class that bans it, the student goes before Tomes and an academic integrity committee. 

If professors do lean into it, there's an expectation that students will do better work, said St. Thomas University associate professor Andrew Klein.