To read the whole article, please visit Winnipeg Free Press.

Because UM is a research-intensive university with learning as its central mission, it’s appropriate to explore the opportunities AI can offer. Our community can benefit in many ways, including enhancing teaching, accessibility, elevating research capacity, optimizing business processes and providing individualized student-centered learning. There are also risks that need consideration, including security, academic integrity, inaccurate or misleading information, resource use and bias towards systematically disadvantaged and marginalized groups.

In 2024, UM established a Committee on Artificial Intelligence to study these opportunities and risks, and then to develop guiding principles for exploration. The Committee reviewed guidelines and documentation from post-secondary institutions around the world before developing the principles listed below that are specific to UM.

What is AI

AI is not a single technology, but a way of using computers and machines to simulate human learning, understanding, problem-solving, creativity and more. It includes machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision and generative AI (genAI).

In higher education, genAI is a primary focus. These tools can create—or generate—their own content such as text, code, images, and videos.

Guiding Principles

When using AI at UM, faculty, students and staff should follow these guidelines:

Intellectual Integrity
Intellectual integrity is core to UM. Faculty, students and staff are expected to uphold the highest academic standards and trust. Such standards must also be maintained in the context of the use of AI. Ultimately, intellectual integrity fosters a culture of honesty, fairness, and respect for knowledge.

Human-Centered Approach
Human relationships are essential in the context of higher education; therefore, a human-centred approach to the use of AI at UM is also critical. AI should augment human capabilities, not replace them. AI should provide opportunities to foster collaboration and innovation. Human characteristics of ethical considerations, trust and transparency are crucial for effective and responsible use of AI. Ultimately, it is humans that guide the use of AI towards meaningful and beneficial outcomes.

Responsible Behaviour
Faculty, students and staff at UM are responsible for their behaviour related to AI. This behaviour should include prioritizing ethical use, integrity and transparency in the development, refinement and use of AI. It is crucial to maintain human oversight of AI systems to optimize beneficial outcomes and prevent misuse.

AI Literacy and Training
The core mission of UM is education and, as such, UM has the responsibility to foster the development of AI literacy within its community. In this way, users, and those impacted by AI, have the necessary skills to make informed choices about the responsible use of AI and the impact of AI in their academic journey, careers and lives.

Privacy and Data Security
UM must ensure that appropriate risk assessments and operational controls are implemented so that our UM data (including that of faculty, students and staff) is not compromised, that privacy is maintained for our user community, and that intellectual property is protected.

Intellectual Property and Copyright
UM supports and defends the principles and legislation related to the protection of intellectual property of its faculty, students and staff. Use of copyrighted materials with AI systems must be done in accordance with the Copyright Act or by permission of the rights holders. UM commits to monitoring the evolving standards related to protection of intellectual property as it relates to the use of AI and informing UM faculty, students and staff about changing requirements.

Environment and Sustainability
UM seeks to be a leader in campus sustainability and demonstrates its leadership through integration of sustainability principles into its strategic plans and operations. The infrastructure that supports AI systems can be electricity and water intensive. UM will seek to preferentially select enterprise AI systems from providers that not only minimize energy requirements but also prioritize sustainability practices.

Accessibility and Fairness
UM commits to ensuring that, where AI is required for teaching and learning, there are no barriers for student access to systems resulting from disability, socio-economic disadvantage, or other factors related to systematically disadvantaged and marginalized groups. In addition, UM will continue to assess any enterprise AI systems to ensure that such AI software does not unfairly discriminate against individuals or groups.

Risk and its Mitigation
UM recognizes there are internal and external risks associated with the use of AI and seeks to eliminate or optimally reduce harms. These risks include but are not limited to exposure of personal or institution data to third parties, copyright infringement and loss of reputation resulting from processes or decisions that rely on AI. UM will continue to review enterprise AI systems within the context of data governance and UM governing documents to minimize risk to faculty, students, and staff.

Next steps

Over the next few months, an online hub for AI will be developed as a space for community members to find practical tips, resources, and training opportunities. Stay tuned to UM Today for updates.

UM’s approach to responsible digital innovation aligns with priorities in MomentUM: Leading change together, UM’s 2024–2029 strategic plan. Through the Digital Governance Council, we strengthen the digital systems that support ethical innovation and knowledge sharing across communities.

Try the AI Research Assistant 

Features 

The AI Research Assistant (beta) includes the following functionality: 

• Provides a summarized response to research questions posed in everyday language. 

• Recommends up to five relevant publications from the Libraries’ collections. 

• Provides an option to “view more” and see your complete search results.  

• Suggests additional question prompts to expand your research topic and explore further. 

• Supports multiple languages. 

Note: Users must log in to use it. 

Limitations 

• The AI Research Assistant is in beta. It is currently being tested before full release. 

• The summaries created by the AI Research Assistant are generated from a maximum of only five publications it decides are relevant to your question. 

• The sources referenced by the AI Research Assistant exclude content from Elsevier, JSTOR, and newspapers. Print collections are also not included in the summaries it generates. 

• AI Research Assistant summaries come from abstracts and descriptions of sources rather than full text. 

• The AI Research Assistant may not generate results from the most current research available. 

Using AI in research 

• Discuss with your professor or advisor the appropriate use of AI for your assignments. 

• Avoid academic misconduct by considering the limitations of AI tools and citing the articles you use. Check for accuracy and verify the responses against the source materials provided.  

• Artificial intelligence tools can sometimes be at odds with citation justice by failing to fairly acknowledge the contributions of diverse scholars and communities. 

Watch this short video or contact the Libraries to learn more about AI Research Assistant. 

Education: The Future is Open 

Friday, March 7, 2025, 2:30-4:00 p.m. 
Senate Chamber, Room E3-262 EITC 
This session will be in-person with a live-stream option. 
Details and registration 
 
Richard Baraniuk [BSc (Eng)/87] will share his experience with the Open Education movement, a grassroots movement shared by a wide range of academics, recognizing that: 

• knowledge should be free and open to use and re-use 

• collaboration should be easier, not harder 

• people should receive credit and kudos for contributions to education and research 

• concepts and ideas are linked in unusual and surprising ways and not the simple linear forms that traditional media present 

Baraniuk will speak to this pivotal moment for the OpenEd community to come together as education is reshaped by advances in AI, evolving student needs, and expanding global challenges.  

About the presenter 

Dr. Richard G. Baraniuk, a graduate of the University of Manitoba, is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University and founder and director of OpenStax (formerly Connexions) as a platform for open knowledge sharing and the world’s largest OER publisher with more than 70 digital textbooks used by 7 million college and high school students this school year. He is also the founder and director of SafeInsights, a large-scale education research hub that will safely connect educational institutions, researchers, and learning platforms. Baraniuk has been active in AI theory research and education applications for 15 years and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, AAAS, and IEEE.  He has received numerous research and education awards, including the IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal, the James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal, and the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education. 

This event is supported by the Advance Open Ed project. 

At the University of Manitoba, Bisons are at the centre of health care, finance, Reconciliation and so much more. Wherever there’s a challenge, you’ll find UM alumni leading the charge. Explore the Bisons at the Centre campaign and meet the alumni shaping Manitoba and beyond. 

Related activities 

• Check out the previous event in the series: From Access to Justice: Realizing the Transformative Potential of Open Educational Practices, with Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani. 

• Advance Open Ed provides financial and practical support along with educational opportunities to help the UM community create, adapt, and adopt open educational resources (OER).  

Experiential Learning in the Arts and Humanities

Date and time: Tuesday, February 4, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

There is more to experiential learning than internships and co-ops. In this workshop, we’ll explore ways in which experiential learning pedagogy and opportunities can be integrated into the arts and humanities classroom.

Register for the Experiential Learning in the Arts and Humanities workshop

Small Shifts, Significant Gains: February Session

Date and time: Tuesday, February 4, 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.

Looking for ways to revitalize your teaching but don’t have time for a big redesign? In Small Teaching, author James Lang argues that small changes in classroom techniques and activities can have big impacts on student learning. Join our sessions to hear practical teaching strategies from faculty guest speakers. Bring your questions and your lunch.  Leave with ideas that you can implement right away in your courses!

Lightning Presentation Speakers:

• Kathy Yerex from the Dr. Gerald Niznick College of Dentistry, presents: Work Smarter, Not Harder: Harnessing AI for Rubrics and Lecture Slides
• Kaleigh Warden from the Dr. Gerald Niznick College of Dentistry, presents: Using Generative AI to Craft Case Studies and Inspire Critical Thinking

Register for Small Shifts, Significant Gains: February Session

Pedagogies of Care: Cultivating Liberatory Spaces

Date and time: Tuesday, February 4, 2:00 p.m. to 2:50 p.m.

Join us for a series of four monthly 50-minute sessions designed for graduate students, instructors, and professors committed to exploring pedagogies of care. These sessions offer strategies that foster care, inclusion, and broadened perspectives in higher education, including insights into how brain science can enhance teaching effectiveness. Each session will provide practical tools for creating inclusive, engaging, and empowering learning environments, drawing on research into neural connections, brain plasticity, and how these processes affect learning, memory retention, and student engagement. Whether you’re teaching in-person or in an online format, this series will equip you with neuroscience-based strategies and pedagogical approaches that cultivate caring and inclusive educational spaces.

During the Cultivating Liberatory Spaces session:

• Participants will be able to identify key elements of relational and emancipatory teaching approaches that foster inclusivity and empowerment in the classroom.
• Participants will reflect on their own teaching practices to create strategies that promote student engagement and cultivate a sense of belonging within learning communities.

Register for the Pedagogies of Care workshop

Virtual Reality-Based Teaching Skills Program – Effective Communication: How to Have Better Conversations with Your Students

Date and time: Wednesday, February 5, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Embark on an immersive skill development journey in our comprehensive Virtual Reality-based teaching skills program designed to enhance communication strategies. During the program, faculty and instructors (graduate students are also welcome) will explore effective techniques that are applicable to various educational contexts. Participants are given the option to practice communication skills in a safe, judgement-free environment that incorporates role play and Virtual Reality-based simulations before applying them in their teaching and learning environments. 

Register for the Virtual Reality-Based Teaching Skills Program

Teaching and Learning Research Colloquium Series: Session 2

Date and time: Thursday, February 6, 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.

The 2024/25 Teaching and Learning Research Colloquium Series shares the important work of University of Manitoba scholars and educators, whose research sheds light on student support needs, barriers to support seeking, and strategies for supporting students’ learning. Over a series of three research talks, faculty, instructors, and support staff will learn from and with each other about supporting diverse learners. Each talk will be followed by a discussion period and refreshments.

Session 2:

Fostering Success: Addressing Basic Psychological Needs for Students with Learning Disabilities in Postsecondary Settings.

The number of students with Learning Disabilities (LD) at postsecondary institutions is increasing; however, their graduation rates continue to lag behind those of their peers. To address this, Dr. Goegan and her team have been exploring Basic Psychological Needs (BPNs) and the impact that the satisfaction or frustration of these needs can have on postsecondary success. Indeed, decades of research has found that supporting students’ needs for autonomy (e.g., feeling in control), competence (e.g., feeling capable), and relatedness (e.g., feeling connected to others) has a positive impact across various indicators of success. As such, this session will begin by providing a summary of research on the satisfaction and frustration of BPNs for students with LD and then explore strategies for supporting the satisfaction of students’ BPNs in postsecondary classrooms.

Register for the Teaching and Learning Research Colloquium Series, Session 2

Manitoba Academic Integrity Network (MAIN) Speaker Series

Date and time: Wednesday, February 12, 2025, 9:00 a.m. to 9:55 a.m.

Session 4: Academic Integrity in the Irish Higher Education System: Lessons Learnt and Reflections along the Way 

In 2019, legislation was passed in Ireland that criminalized the provision or advertisement of contract cheating services. Shortly thereafter, the National Academic Integrity Network, which brings together representatives from across the Irish higher education sector (and more recently the vocational/further education sector), was established. Throughout its five years of existence, NAIN has encouraged and supported the development of cultures of academic integrity in higher education institutions and produced resources to guide and assist institutions. Since 2023, elements of the N-TUTORR project, a national program of activity aimed at building capacity in the relatively new technological university sector, has been building upon and working in partnership with NAIN to progress and support the implementation of NAIN resources. In this webinar, the chair of NAIN and the N-TUTORR academic integrity project lead will discuss the benefits of collaboration and partnership and reflect upon lessons learnt. 

Register for the MAIN Speaker Series, Session 4

Experiential Learning Community of Practice Brown Bag Conversations: AI Powered Critical Reflection

Date and time: Thursday, February 13, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Bring your lunch and connect with other members of our community of practice! There is no formal agenda for these casual meetings just good people and conversation! Everyone is welcome to share their thoughts and experiences as we explore different topics in experiential learning. 

Topic: AI powered critical reflection. Are your students using AI to complete reflection assignments? What challenges are you experiencing? What might be some strategies to overcome those challenges? 

Register for AI Powered Critical Reflection

Manitoba Academic Integrity Network (MAIN) Speaker Series

Date and time: Tuesday, February 18, 2025, 10:00 a.m. to 10:55 a.m.

The Centre is excited to host the 2024-2025 Manitoba Academic Integrity Network (MAIN) Speaker Series, a collection of six professional development opportunities related to academic integrity. A Certificate of Completion will be awarded to individuals who register and attend all six sessions in this series. Visit the Manitoba Academic Integrity Network Speaker Series website for more details.

Session 5: Neutralizing the “Threat”: A Practitioners Guide to Re-Evaluating Student Assessments to Maintain Academic Integrity 

Technology and various tools have the power to disrupt learning and compromise academic integrity. The onslaught of genAI has caused many of us to reconsider our assessments, yet the task of assessment redesign can be daunting, and we may not know where to begin. This presentation discusses four broad “filters” through which educators can consider how to best move forward (or not) with an existing assessment. When considered with other concepts, theories, and contextual factors, these filters may help enrich our decision-making. The four filters are, Abandon, Monitor, Enhance, & Adopt, and they all intended to help “neutralize the threat” to assessments. Overall, these filters are intended to provide a guide or framework for faculty (or used by those who coach or work with faculty) when they are considering assessment redesign while promoting academic integrity.

Register for the MAIN Speaker Series, Session 5

Pedagogies of Care: Universal Design – Curb Cutting the Academy

Date and time: Tuesday, February 25, 1:00 p.m. to 1:50 p.m.

Join us for a series of four monthly 50-minute sessions designed for graduate students, instructors, and professors committed to exploring pedagogies of care. These sessions offer strategies that foster care, inclusion, and broadened perspectives in higher education, including insights into how brain science can enhance teaching effectiveness. Each session will provide practical tools for creating inclusive, engaging, and empowering learning environments, drawing on research into neural connections, brain plasticity, and how these processes affect learning, memory retention, and student engagement. Whether you’re teaching in-person or in an online format, this series will equip you with neuroscience-based strategies and pedagogical approaches that cultivate caring and inclusive educational spaces.

During the Universal Design – Curb Cutting the Academy session:

• Participants will be able to discuss learning activities that incorporate Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, ensuring accessibility for all students.
• Participants will evaluate existing course materials and assessments to identify opportunities for enhancing accessibility and inclusivity.

Register for the Pedagogies of Care workshop

Open Educational Resources: What, Why, and How

Date and time: Thursday, February 27, 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

The term open educational resources (OER) describes a wide range of materials in teaching and learning that are available for public use with an open license or in the public domain. Examples of OER include full courses, course modules, syllabi, textbooks, lectures, assessments, and datasets. In this workshop, participants will learn why OER are valuable, and how to locate them, how to evaluate them using a rubric. The workshop does not assume prior experience with these topics.

Register for the Open Educational Resources workshop

Universal Design for Learning in Practice: Clarify the Meaning and Purpose of the Goals

Date and time: Thursday, February 27, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Join us for the last Thursday of each month in an ongoing series, where participants will review discreet elements of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Participants will work together to develop pedagogical practices that align with the UDL principle being discussed that month.

Topic: This session will focus on CAST’s UDL principle of clarifying the meaning and purpose of the goals and how it can be directly applied to pedagogical practice. There will be a brief presentation of the core elements of this principle followed by a question-and-answer session where participants can collaborate with the facilitator to develop their practice.

Register for Clarify the Meaning and Purpose of the Goals

Wenxi Pu (Associate Dean, Assistant Professor, The Associates Fellow in Innovation) has spent about eight years working to do just that in a piece now published in the FT50-ranked Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

Pu and co-authors’ work, “Shifts in national entrepreneurial culture: The promise of linguistic cultural artifacts and machine learning analysis,” looks at national entrepreneurial culture, asking how cultural attitudes have shifted over time.

“One of the things I’m most proud of is how this study offers new ways to capture culture about entrepreneurship at the national level,” says Pu.

With a dataset of close to 700,000 articles published about entrepreneurship and related topics in over 100 regional and national US newspapers (two decades’ worth, spanning 1996 to 2016), Pu argues that a linguistic analysis of a nation’s media production, supported by machine learning algorithms and AI, can reveal and capture cultural attitudes about entrepreneurship.

In other words, researchers can infer how we think and feel about a topic over time by analyzing huge amounts of written data.

When it comes to entrepreneurship in the United States between the mid nineties and 2010s, the general trend is that positivity bias toward entrepreneurship has increased.

“We found the emotional tone trending up and the analytical thinking trending down in the news articles about entrepreneurship that we analyzed, suggesting that we are culturally more emotional while less analytical about entrepreneurship over time,” Pu explains.

Pu’s study found that positivity bias toward entrepreneurship increased the most in accounts of entrepreneurial aspirations and journeys—the starts of startups and the entrepreneurial path.

The also team found a correlation between this rise in positivity about entrepreneurship with the quality of entrepreneurial ventures taking place at the same time. As positive attitudes about entrepreneurship increase, more ventures got started, but they also had lower growth potential.

“Further analysis suggested that this positivity bias might have encouraged entrepreneurs to create new ventures but might have limited the growth potential for those start-ups, so we need to strike a balance,” Pu says.

For Pu, this study has been generative, showcasing innovative ways to imagine culture and opening up a slew of questions to pursue.

“As a method paper, this study contributes more than just these findings about shifts in national entrepreneurial culture. It also allowed us to test a method using machine learning and AI to make this process of qualitative analysis far more efficient,” he says.

As a researcher and the Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at the Asper School of Business, Pu encourages his colleagues and students to tap into the ways that AI allows us to do what we haven’t been able to do before and the ways that AI allows more time for truly creative, innovative pursuits.

The future is exciting to him, and he looks forward to seeing how AI transforms businesses and our daily lives.

Reading Pu’s work, it is hard not to imagine new applications for both the AI-supported methodology and for the questions the study raises about entrepreneurship itself. It’s certainly generative; more than that, it is creative.

—

The Asper School of Business aims to expand global knowledge and engage in intellectual exploration to advance teaching, learning, and research. Our researchers’ scholarly work is regularly published in internationally renowned publications.

Be part of this flourishing research culture and learn more about research programs in management (MSc and PhD) at the Stu Clark Graduate School here.

Academic integrity is the commitment, by students and the university, to upholding a set of six values explained defined by the ICAC.

Many students understand academic integrity as simply avoiding plagiarism. While properly citing sources is an important aspect of maintaining honesty in the university, academic integrity encompasses behaviour as well. Showing respect to peers and faculty, for example, is integral to academic integrity. The goal, ultimately, is to create an environment where ideas can be shared freely and developed in a way that students have the opportunity to learn.

UM has a procedure for academic misconduct which seeks to uphold academic integrity amongst the student population. The policy identifies forms of academic misconduct, disciplinary action, and the investigative procedure if academic misconduct is suspected. The university defines academic misconduct as “any conduct that has, or might reasonably be seen to have, an adverse effect on the academic integrity of the University,” which includes plagiarism, cheating on quizzes, tests and exams, inappropriate collaboration, duplicate submission, and academic fraud. For complete definitions please consult UM’s student academic misconduct procedure.

There are resources students can consult to help maintain academic integrity, including those for proper referencing and citations as well as throughout the writing process. Citation Guides are published and maintained by the UM libraries. For students unsure what style to use, consult the course instructor and, when in doubt, speak to the appropriate subject librarian. They can not only help find information, but also ensure it is properly cited. The library also offers numerous drop in study sessions and workshops to hone students’ writing, research, and study skills.
Tutoring and study group sessions available through the Academic Learning Centre (ALC) are collaborative resources that can help students organize their ideas, build skills and increase academic self esteem. The ALC also offers workshops on academic success and academic integrity. All these resources exist to help students, and turning to them early is a good way to prevent a last-minute crunch when meeting deadlines.

What about artificial intelligence? There is a lot of buzz about generative AI in the university, and generally it is discouraged. This includes text and image generators, editing software, paraphrasing generators, and predictive text softwares. Actual policies and procedures will vary from department to department, instructor to instructor. Understanding the ramifications of AI and academic integrity can be complex, especially as the technology continues to develop. UM has a few guidelines to understanding AI use, but when in doubt consult with instructors or professors regarding what is and isn’t acceptable AI use.

For more information on what academic integrity looks like on campus, check out the Show Your Integrity newsletter or contact the academic integrity office at AcademicIntegrity@umanitoba.ca. Other resources can be found through the UM’s academic supports webpage.

The growing number of older adults will result in increased complex age-related conditions (CACs), including injuries from falls and symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and dementia, putting significant pressure on the Canadian health-care system.

To help address these challenges, Dr. Mina Nouredanesh, assistant professor of community health sciences at the Max Rady College of Medicine in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, has been appointed a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in artificial intelligence (AI) for complex health data.

This prestigious appointment recognizes Nouredanesh’s pioneering research to develop innovative solutions for age-related conditions and alleviate stress on populations, caregivers and the health-care system. She brings a multidisciplinary lens to this research, owing to her extensive experience in engineering, machine learning and health data analysis.

“My goal is to design innovative, AI-powered personalized tools to help understand and treat the many factors that contribute to CACs and improve the lives of older adults and their caregivers,” said Nouredanesh.

Despite many technological advancements in recent years, knowledge gaps persist, including a lack of precise tools to proactively assess individual-level risks associated with CACs. Every case is unique due to the complexity of symptoms or injury experienced by older adults.  

“There are no effective cures to many CACs, so identifying early signs, well in advance of their onset, or detecting factors that trigger them in those already affected, is crucial for developing targeted interventions to delay their progression and mitigate impact,” says Nouredanesh. “One-size-fits-all prevention and rehabilitation strategies often fall short because each individual may experience a specific interplay between various risk factors that contribute to the development of these adverse conditions,” she adds.

Nouredanesh will address the complex nature of CACs by looking at multiple types of information, bringing together physical, genetic, psychological, socioeconomic, behavioural and environmental data from a variety of sources. Her work will address critical questions, such as:

• What factors are sensitive to early signs of a CAC in an individual?
• What contexts in everyday scenarios trigger a CAC in a symptomatic individual?
• How to intervene?

To answer these questions, Nouredanesh will use questionnaires, in-lab data such as blood tests and medical imaging, and free-living data collected by wearable sensors — such as smart watches — that older adults can wear in their everyday environments.

Nouredanesh will use AI to expand personalized medicine and improve diagnostic, prognostic and treatment methods. While AI has shown promise in addressing health problems, she says, it is in the early stages of development when it comes to predicting and managing CACs, such as falling. 

The scientist hopes that this work will assist in the diagnosis and management of age-related conditions and will help to improve functioning in older adults, enhancing their independence. Ultimately, she says, personalized assistive technologies could reduce health-system burdens and contribute significantly to older adults’ quality of life.

 Although academic integrity is an important consideration, institutions like UM are also evaluating the benefits AI can bring to expanding learning capabilities, sparking creativity, improving productivity and so much more. 

When AI is used safely and ethically it can create better post-secondary experiences for learners, educators and staff. 

Enhancing teaching and learning

Brenda Stoesz acknowledges it can be cognitively demanding for educators to understand how they want to incorporate AI, if at all. She’s the Research Lead for the Science of Teaching and Learning at UM’s The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. 

 “A lot of people are thinking genAI (generative AI) is going to be used to cheat on the final assessment. But what about using it for just a general learning activity in the class to support the learning experience, and modeling or showing how one might use these tools in ethical ways in the classroom?” Stoesz says. 

“Educators really have to understand what the goals of their courses and programs are. If genAI can help take some of the workload off students in areas that are not necessarily the expectation for or outcome of the course, then finding a way to incorporate the technology might be a good idea. For example, a learning outcome of a lot of courses is not “by the end of the course, a student will be able to brainstorm”. And so then perhaps it makes sense for students to feel comfortable using different technologies to help them get past the thing that could prevent them from getting to the actual outcome.”

She highlights a recent discussion with faculty about requiring students to have skills in debating where it can be difficult to have opportunities to practice. “Bringing in generative AI or a chat bot of some kind and setting it up to practice debating skills might be a great learning opportunity.”

Xinli Wang, an instructor in the Department of Mathematics, has used AI to help students understand foundational mathematical concepts and appropriately use mathematical symbols and language. She asked students to revise a flawed mathematical proof generated by ChatGPT, followed by group discussion and review. By the end of the course, students had developed the skills required to use the tools effectively and identify errors appropriately.

Ensuring AI tools are used properly is something that resonates with Tess Poulton, a second-year law student. Her exposure to AI has happened mostly outside the classroom: while doing research with one of her professors, Dr. Katie Szilagyi (an expert in law and technology), and while working at a law firm over the summer where she had access to paid legal resources with AI capabilities that could help with legal research and writing.

All of this has made her realise the importance of developing the right skills first so AI tools can be used appropriately.

“Even though law school is a program with a direct career after it, it’s still about learning the law … with the goal of developing legal minds,” she says. “I think it’s more important to develop critical thinking skills and to emphasize mind development, like needing to figure out how to problem solve and to work your way through different resources. Because if you’re able to do that, you’re going to be able to use these AI models after you finish law school when you’re working.”

Cross-campus benefits

Proper training and digital literacy is key when using AI and will be at the forefront of any UM strategies.

Currently IST, in collaboration with the Provost’s office, is running a pilot project on M365 CoPilot to explore and assess its potential as an innovative and empowering tool for faculty, staff and administrators. Before gaining access, participants completed two training courses that introduced them to the concepts and principles of the technology and how to use it responsibly and ethically. 

The majority of participants are using Copilot for content generation and refinement (such as Word, PowerPoint), document and email summarization, and data analysis and manipulation (such as Excel). Copilot has a variety of features, including using simple prompts to create presentations, analysing trends across Excel files, and creating meeting notes and action items in real time.  

 The initiative is part of UM’s broader digital strategy, which now includes a university-wide task force that is identifying the value and risks associated with AI as well as what tools can be most beneficial. 

In the coming months, The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning will launch generative AI training modules for educators in UM Learn.

Those interested in learning more about digital technology in the education environment can check out the following resources:

• (Webinar) The AI Horizon of Higher Education: emergent tools and policy considerations
• The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning – Artificial Intelligence
• (LOD course) M365: Teams – Collaborating with Colleagues
• (LOD course) M365: Dictate & Transcribe
• (LOD course) Adobe Checking for Accessibility
• Digital Community of Practice: a forum to promote best practices and build common capabilities across UM in digital technology.
• Power Platform Community of Practice: a place for citizen developers using Microsoft’s Power Platform suite of tools to come together and share ideas, projects, and best practices.
• Digital Content Maintenance Training: for users responsible for managing content on University of Manitoba digital properties.
• Office Hours website help: regular access to expert guidance on digital work, specifically for umanitoba.ca, UM Today and UM Intranet.

A 2023 survey by KPMG consulting found over a third of the companies they spoke to are regularly using ChatGPT in their work.

So what are the concerns around artificial intelligence and how should Canadians prepare for the future?

Dr. David Gerhard is the head of Computer Science at the University of Manitoba. He took your questions about A.I.

To listen to the conversation/callers questions, please visit CBC Cross Country Checkup.