Writing assistants and writing support tools that utilise GenAI and their relationship to academic integrity have been a hot topic of late. As with many other aspects of academic integrity and GenAI, there’s no silver bullet solution and it can be a challenge to navigate the space effectively.
Education Futures has recently developed guidance to assist staff and students in understanding how these tools can be used appropriately and effectively in learning and assessment. The guidance focuses on navigating the intersection of writing assistance tools and assessment integrity to enable staff and students to make effective and contextually-appropriate decisions.
As use of specific tools or approaches isn’t appropriate to define at a university level and decisions on what is appropriate in specific assessment contexts sit with Unit Coordinators, many staff are now considering how to provide direction to students in their units.To do this effectively, since it’s not possible to stay on top of all available platforms and their specific operations, the guidance suggests staff focus on features and functions instead of specific platforms. To help understand how you can interpret this in practice to provide advice to your students, here is a list of common types of functions that you can consider and articulate as appropriate/not appropriate in your assessment context:
- Spelling and grammar checking
- AI assistance for structure, wording, formatting or other functional writing aspects
- AI generation of topics or ideas to inform writing
- AI generation of content
Students then need to use their judgement regarding how these apply to any specific tools they use and specific practices they engage in. The guidance also provides advice for students on documenting their working process and citing use of GenAI to support ethical practice.
Another key consideration is ensuring decisions are risk-informed and balance our obligations under legislation effectively, particularly regarding access needs and reasonable adjustments for students with disabilities. The guidance provides advice for staff and students around this and links to resources for further reading.
You can read the full guidance article via the Academic Integrity website: