AI and education

AI is pushing the boundaries of how we approach teaching, learning and the management of educational institutions.

It presents exciting opportunities to innovate our approach to education now and in the future and brings benefits including; efficiency in administrative tasks, personalised learning opportunities, greater insights and enhanced accessibility. As we embrace this potential though, we must also consider how we ustiise AI responsibly, safely and with integrity - protecting the values of our institution and higher education.

Embedding AI in education practices

AI has the power to support personalised learning paths, academic skills and aid in the fair and efficient evaluation of student work. It has far reaching implications for the ways in which we will develop our programmes, design assessment and feedback, and teach students of the future.

Essential considerations for using Gen AI for Teaching and Learning

Key questions to consider on tool use, methods, preparing your students, and evaluating the outcomes of your approach.

1. Curriculum design and development

AI has the potential to revolutionise the methods and processes of curriculum design as well as the content of our curricula.

2. Assessment and feedback

AI brings both opportunities and challenges to assessment for staff and students. We must consider how it can used responsibly and effectively.

3. Teaching and Learning

In todays rapidly evolving educational landscape AI can help us innovate our approach to teaching and learning

4. Examples of AI in education practice

Dive into case studies on how others are using AI in practice

Presentations and events

See recordings related to AI and Education including the Education in a world with Generative AI mini-conference from October 2025 and the School for Business & Society Masterclass Series

Key considerations

What Gen AI tools are you planning to use?

The University has an educational licence for Google Gemini which is available for staff and students, and is the recommended AI service to use. The educational licence ensures that staff and student personal data is not shared with the AI training model or with third parties. This means that prompts, which may be text, images or other files, are not used to train the AI models. Google NotebookLM and Microsoft Copilot, are also available under a protected licence agreement.

The University has also undertaken data privacy impact assessments for other centrally-supported AI toolsets, such as Blackboard Learn Ultra and Mentimeter, which similarly protect staff / student personal data and do not pass on data to develop the AI training model (AI tools for Learning Technology).

If you are proposing to use an AI tool which is not centrally supported and has not been subject to a data privacy impact assessment (DPIA) or cloud risk assessment, you will need to take steps to investigate data management issues - i.e. data privacy and the management / access of the tools to ensure that compliance and ethical considerations been addressed.

Please note that the University’s current advice is to only sign up for external (non-centrally supported) AI tools with your own personal account and not to use these tools to process university data, especially students’ assessments, such as the use of automated marking or AI detection tools.

How will the Gen AI tool(s) be employed - what methods will you use?

Some key questions include:

What is your proposed use case for AI?
How will the tool(s) be incorporated within the proposed learning activity?
Are there any challenges associated with your proposed use case? If so, how will they be addressed?

For example, the use of AI may be focused on a diverse range of texts, including formative assessments, module material, books, discussions, or challenging concepts as flagged by the students, to understand user input, generate human-like responses, provide customised recommendations and feedback, and maintain coherent conversations on a wide range of topics.

Note that licensed texts and learning resources will have copyright protections, which may prohibit the inputting/uploading articles or books or other material into a generative AI tool, which could be in contravention with the terms of use set by the publishers or other rights holder.

Encouraging student engagement and evaluating your use of Generative AI

Some key questions include:

What measures and support will be provided to help students in their use of the tools? This might, for example, include prior consideration of access and accessibility issues in using the tools (Goldenthal et al., 2021) or guidance on prompts when using Gen AI (UCL principles on effective prompting).
What guidelines will be provided for students on the appropriate use of AI? For example, guidance on avoiding breach of copyright rules for licensed reading materials or how to cite / reference AI output correctly (Generative AI: A practical guide).
What feedback loops / milestones will be put in place? How will student engagement and progress be monitored?
What criteria will be used to evaluate the student experience?
What methods will be used to capture the data to address your criteria?

1. Curriculum design and development

AI has the potential to revolutionise the methods and processes of curriculum design as well as the content of our curricula. Both will need to evolve to incorporate AI subject matter as well as teaching on the broader societal, ethical and legal implications of a world that relies heavily on AI in the future.

Below you will find links to resources from those recommending and pioneering change in these areas.

Academic integrity, ethics and quality

Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)

Recommendations on the ethical use of AI in Education from the European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI); Article and Presentation Slides

Webinar: AI, Race and Racism and Critical Pedagogies (Warwick International Higher Education Academy, University of Warwick)

Accessibility

AI and Accessibility: feature, the future or fad? University of York Digital Accessibility Unit

Generative AI and accessibility in education (JISC)

AI in inclusive education (SEN Magazine)

Digital accessibility in the era of artificial intelligence: Bibliometric analysis and systematic review (National Library of Medicine)

Compliance

Information Commissioner's Office Guidance and Resources: Artificial Intelligence

2. Assessment and feedback

AI brings both opportunities and challenges for staff when assessing. The resources below help to share guidance and ideas on how AI use can be incorporated responsibly in support of the student experience.

Toolkits and aids