Engaging with Generative AI in your education and assessment
Guidance on how you might engage with Generative AI (GenAI) in your assessments effectively and ethically.
GenAI is a technique in artificial intelligence in which outputs such as text, images, code, music, and video are generated by software. GenAI is potentially transformative as well as disruptive, and GenAI tools will feature in many academic and professional workplaces. Rather than seek to prohibit your use of them, we will support you in using them effectively, ethically and transparently.
However, it may not always be appropriate to use GenAI. Whilst they are attractively powerful and easy to use, GenAI tools can provide misleading or incorrect information. They can also negatively impact your learning by reducing the need for critical engagement that is key to deep and meaningful learning. Additionally, you need to be aware of the difference between reasonable use of such tools, and at what point their use might be regarded as giving you an unfair advantage.
Key resources
- For more details on how GenAI works, the ethical implications and limitations of the tools and the ways in which you can use them, please visit the Generative AI Hub.
- The Generative AI and Academic Skills Moodle course provides a more in-depth look at GenAI in an academic context.
- You should acknowledge GenAI use where it has been used to assist in the process of creating your work. The Library Skills pages share guidance on how and when to acknowledge GenAI in your work.
GenAI and academic integrity
Academic misconduct is strictly prohibited, including the use of essay mills, homework help sites, plagiarism, collusion, falsification, impersonation or any other action which might give me an unfair advantage.
An unfair advantage is:
- when you hide something and aren’t transparent about your approach.
- when you take something directly from someone (or something) else and don’t reference or acknowledge it.
- when you don’t follow the assessment guidance.
It is not acceptable to use GenAI tools to write your entire assessment and present this as your own work. Words and ideas from GenAI tools are making use of other human authors’ ideas without referencing them, which is considered by many to be a form of plagiarism.
Using GenAI tools to check your grammar or spelling is usually appropriate if the tool is not rewriting a large proportion of your work. Similarly, tasks such as ideas generation or planning may be an appropriate use. For all assessments, your context and the nature of the assessment must be considered.
Your teachers will give guidance on:
- what ways (if at all) you are permitted to use GenAI.
- which aspects of your work it is appropriate (or even expected) that you use GenAI for.
If you are unsure about what constitutes acceptable use of GenAI in an assessment, ask for clarification from the module leader. If no explicit instructions are given, the default for assessments should be that you use GenAI in an assistive role while making sure that the final submission is still substantially your own work.
Staff resources on how to guide students on the use of GenAI in assessments can be found on the Generative AI Hub. Category 2 describes in more detail how GenAI might be used in an assistive role.
UCL does not use GenAI detectors when marking. Instead, if a marker has any concerns about your work, they may speak to you to get more information. You should not automatically assume this means that they suspect you of academic misconduct.
Inappropriate use of GenAI is viewed as plagiarism. This is defined as the representation of other people’s work or ideas as your own without appropriate referencing or acknowledgement. This includes the use of GenAI tools that exceeds that permitted in the assessment brief.
If teaching staff suspect that you are trying to pass off GenAI output as your own work then the regulations in the Academic Manual (9.2.5 a), 9.2.5 e) iii, and 9.2.6 c) may apply. You may be invited to an investigatory viva to probe the authorship of your work.
