Day 1 – Introductory video available to view here.
Day 2 – Seeking Permission
“Hmm, are we even allowed to use AI to provide formative feedback, and anyway who would we ask…? Forgiveness is always better than permission, right!?”
As an engineer working in the pedagogical research space, it can often feel that the University systems are there to stifle innovation and squash ideas. Cue the classic engineering mindset: define the problem, ideate, and build a solution. But where does ‘permission’ fit into that process?
There are lots of pithy sayings such as ‘ask for forgiveness not permission’, etc., but in this case, we, the Engineering academic team* were quite unsure as to how University policy and guidance had developed in this rapidly evolving space. So, I did what I do well; ask the right questions to the right people!
This, I would say, started the journey of discovery and learning for myself and the teaching team. It turned out that using AI for direct generation of feedback or assessment of student work was quite an institutional red line…
That said the red line did not trigger a ‘stop whatever you are doing, and we will fetch the Neuralyzer’**, it started a dialogue which helped us develop our own practice!
We started out getting in contact with Aisling Terney who has a focus on AI use in the institution. We took that to ai-education@bristol.ac.uk where the proposal was evaluated by the institutional team and rather than stamping out the practice, we received further advice on how to run the project well and within the institutions current regulatory enviroment. From this start, we were put in contact with IT-Service’s James Bingham (Head of IT Partnering – Education) to help us navigate the IT due diligence process which again, was smooth. The main output of which was the Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) process.
Tomorrow’s blog will feature more about the details of how that was moved forwards through our own personal concerns to Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) Ethics and more!
* On the unit of 830 students we have an extremely collaborative approach to delivery, 6 academic staff (Anna Baker, Josh Hoole, Rich Pyle (the AI Hero!), Francesca Pianosi, and Aydin Nassehi) + about 15 super star teaching support assistants!
** Neuralyzer = Men in Black memory eraser
