The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Excellence created Guidance on artificial intelligence (AI), a resource for faculty, researchers and staff to address academic integrity, assignment and assessment redesign, UH System resources and related policies. The guidance was created in response to the advent of AI tools, such as ChatGPT, GPT-4, Microsoft’s Bing and others, that raise new questions and challenges for academia.
“Whether it is the research that we conduct or the instruction of our students and even the ways that we all do our daily work, there is no doubt in my mind that artificial intelligence will play an increasingly important role,” said UH Mānoa Provost Michael Bruno. “The importance of issuing this guidance is that we want to, as best as we can, get this right and make use of the evolving technology in a way that improves our research, leads to new important discoveries and that contributes to even greater learning.”
The widespread availability of AI tools creates both challenges and opportunities for instructors. Faculty and staff are encouraged to participate in professional development through the Office of Faculty Development and Support, such as the upcoming Generative AI in the Classroom, and through UH Online Innovation Center’s upcoming events, such as Text-to-Multimedia Generative AI Tools or academic/research related AI-based tools.
“Faculty should be aware of the implications for how students are going to be able to use artificial intelligence to respond to assignments, as well as how they themselves can leverage it for teaching and learning experiences that they are designing for students,” said UH Mānoa Interim Associate Vice Provost for Academic Excellence Paul McKimmy.
Balancing AI’s potential and addressing these challenges is important, as these tools are already reshaping aspects of higher education.
“They need to learn about the tools that are directly impacting their disciplines because now that these are available we actually have two jobs,” said McKimmy. “One is to teach students the appropriate, skillful and ethical use of these tools and the other is how to think, write and communicate without them.”
For more information, questions or concerns, email McKimmy at mckimmy@hawaii.edu.