Developing Digital Literacy
Learning to use GenAI tools productively and responsibly forms an important component of digital literacy. The University is committed to ensuring students acquire the skills and knowledge to adapt and thrive in an evolving professional landscape.
For general learning purposes – as distinct from summative assessment – students are encouraged to explore how GenAI might support their studies. This could include:
- exploring complex topics and generating explanations
- brainstorming ideas and structuring arguments
- practising concepts through dialogue with AI
- checking grammar and improving clarity
- summarising reading materials
- generating practice questions.
Students should follow all University policies when using GenAI for learning, including the Academic Integrity Policy and Acceptable Use of ICT Resources Policy.
A Note of Caution: GenAI tools do not “know” facts in the way humans do. They generate text based on statistical patterns and may produce confident-sounding but incorrect or outdated information – sometimes called “hallucinations.” Students must independently verify any information obtained through GenAI before relying on it. Over-reliance on GenAI can also create gaps in foundational knowledge that become apparent in supervised assessments, where these tools are unavailable. The skills developed through independent reading, writing, and problem-solving remain essential to academic success and professional competence.
Using GenAI Responsibly
Understanding Limitations
GenAI systems have significant limitations that students should understand:
- Accuracy – outputs may contain factual errors, fabricated references, or misattributed quotations
- Currency – models have training cut-off dates and may not reflect recent developments
- Depth – responses often lack the nuanced, sustained analysis expected in academic work
- Originality – GenAI recombines existing patterns rather than generating genuinely novel insight
- Context – tools cannot fully understand assessment requirements, disciplinary conventions, or individual learning needs.
Students should treat GenAI as one resource among many – useful for certain tasks, but never a substitute for scholarly rigour or independent thought.
Ethical Considerations
Decisions about whether and how to use GenAI should consider several ethical dimensions:
- Environmental impact – GenAI systems require substantial computational resources resulting in high energy and water consumption
- Bias – models may reflect and perpetuate biases present in their training data
- Consent and provenance – training datasets may include material used without creators’ consent
- Labour practices – the development of these systems raises questions about working conditions in data labelling and content moderation
- Intellectual property – the legal status of AI-generated content remains contested.
Students are encouraged to engage critically with these issues as part of developing an informed perspective on AI in their discipline.
Maintaining Core Skills
It remains essential for students to cultivate their own capabilities in:
- critical thinking and analytical reasoning
- written and oral communication
- independent research and source evaluation
- disciplinary knowledge and methodology
- professional judgement and decision-making.
These skills cannot be developed by outsourcing intellectual work to AI. Students should consider carefully when GenAI supports their learning and when it might hinder the development of competencies they will need throughout their careers.