Teaching students to use AI responsibly

Resources to use in your course:

• Introduction to AI, UQ Support and your assessment slides (PPTX, 24.2 MB)
• Example guidance for students acknowledging AI use adapted from Dr Peter Worthy (PPTX).

Students are looking for guidance about how to use AI effectively in their courses. Research at UQ, led by Kelly Matthews with Christine Slade, explored how students are using AI. Winter research students Claudia Maya and Alessandra Tran developed a guide for staff (PDF, 217.3 KB) based on this work highlighting students’:

• uncertainty about AI in their studies
• desire for further guidance
• trust through transparency when using AI
• connection and compassion. 

UQ has also developed the AI student hub with information to support students in their coursework studies.

As academics, we play a crucial role in preparing our students to navigate a future shaped by AI. This involves not only thinking about how AI is used in our disciplines but also ensuring that students are equipped to use it ethically and effectively in their studies and future careers. 

Dr Peter Worthy discusses: What does responsible use of AI tools mean?

Pratt and Zhang (2025) provide a case study of responsible AI us in a UQ first-year creative inquiry context. Taptamat et al. (2025) provides a case study of developing an online module for science students around responsible AI use in partnership with science students. Bidar (2025) reflects on developing students' AI capabilities in information systems courses.  

Dr Shahrzad Roohy Gohar: Integration of AI literacy into a first year core course

Addressing AI in your course assessment 

AI presents both opportunities and challenges for learning and assessment. To support students, it’s important to clearly articulate expectations about the use of AI in your course assessments and to foster open discussions about AI’s role in your course. Utilise the Introduction to AI, UQ Support and your assessment slides (PPTX, 24.5 MB) for informational and assessment examples that you can reference in your course and presentation materials. These slides were last updated 4 February 2025.

Clarify expectations

• Reinforce the guidance in course profiles about when and how AI can be used in assessments.
• Provide specific examples of acceptable uses, to clarify effective use versus uses that may impede learning.

Explain the rationale behind AI decisions

• Clearly communicate how assessment and learning activities are designed to help students achieve learning outcomes.
• Explain why decisions about AI were made in relation to assessment tasks. When students understand why an activity matters, they are more likely to engage actively, rather than rely on AI to do the work for them. 

Provide guidance on acknowledging or citing AI

• Be explicit about when and how AI should be acknowledged or cited in your course.
• Share examples and direct students to the relevant UQ Library’s guidance on referencing AI.
• Model these practices in your teaching to build trust and to set clear expectations. 
• Example guidance for students acknowledging AI use adapted from Dr Peter Worthy (PPTX).

Supporting students’ effective use of AI

Students are already integrating AI into their studies and lives — over 80% of UQ students report using AI in their academic work. To help students make informed decisions: 

• Educate on responsible AI use
  • Provide advice on how AI can be used effectively to support learning.
  • Highlight the risks of over-reliance on AI, showing how it can undermine learning when misused.
• Facilitate conversations about AI ethics
  • Recognise the diverse views students may have on the ethical use of AI, which may differ from your own. 
  • Explore real-world examples of ethical dilemmas involving AI and encourage critical discussions in your classes. 
• Build trust through transparency
  • Help students understand both the opportunities and limitations of AI in your discipline. 
  • Model appropriate acknowledgement when you use AI
  • Showcase how AI can be used as a tool for learning while being transparent about its challenges.

By proactively addressing these considerations, we can empower our students to use AI as a tool for learning, growth and professional success — while fostering a deeper understanding of its implications.

When using AI, you can let AI do all the thinking for you, which can suppress your ability to problem solve on your own.

- UQ student voice forum, July 2024 

Learning requires time, effort, challenge and reflection. The Higher Education Learning Framework highlights:

• learning as becoming
• contextual learning
• emotions and learning
• interactive learning
• learning to learn and higher-order thinking
• learning challenges and difficulties
• deep and meaningful learning.

AI can impact all of these themes and principles for learning. Further relying on AI for specific activities can undermine skills in that area, for example writing skills can deteriorate if students rely on AI for this work rather than practicing these skills.

These concerns about AI supporting learning are well founded. Research projects demonstrated that AI can be used to either help or hinder learning. For example, recent advances in AI have been valuable in feedback simulations for teacher education, as personal tutors for school students in Nigeria and Turkish school students and for enhancing writing productivity. Alongside this there are a range of projects demonstrating ways to use AI to avoid or minimise learning.  

• For AI to work as a learning tool, our students’ needs to do the work of learning. AI can provide feedback, encouragement, and guide practice. The AI student hub has a range of examples of AI prompts for learning versus cheating which can be useful for sharing and discussing with your students to highlight the boundaries of AI for learning. 

Prompt collections

• AI digital essentials has example prompts as part of UQ Library advice and support for students around the use of AI
• Prompts to support students following the steps for writing an assignment (as adapted by David Rowland)
• Prompts for students developed by Ethan Mollick
• How to use generative AI in education developed by students and staff at The University of Sydney
• The University of Sheffield manages a crowd sourced, curated prompt bank
• OpenAI provides a range of Prompt packs including a prompt pack for students.
   

AI can be a practical, time-saving support in teaching when it’s used deliberately and responsibly. One helpful starting point is Jason Tangen’s Academic AI guide, which frames AI as an “enhancer” and encourages educators to explore what’s possible while making careful ethical choices about what (and what not) to automate.

UQ practice also shows how AI can strengthen inclusive learning design. In a dentistry case study, AI was used (with human oversight) to help restructure course sites, clarify success criteria, and create multimodal learning materials (for example, slides, podcasts, interactive modules, and recorded tutorials), alongside explicit expectations for responsible use and disclosure (Weerakoon, 2025). 

Across the business school Mitchell (2025) describes three approaches to integrating AI. Wright and Baruah (2025) explore using a range of AI tools to strengthen counselling and communication in dietetic education. 

When using AI in your teaching ensure you are protecting personal information and copyright materials, monitoring bias and checking the accuracy of your work. Modelling appropriate acknowledgement can build trust and support your students to engage in ethical and effective AI use. 

Fitzgerald (2025) provides an overview of insights for people teaching in higher education in the age of AI.

Dr Olivia Wright: The AI learning initiative via engagement