Teaching students to use AI responsibly

AI is becoming part of students’ learning, professional practice and everyday lives. Educators therefore have an important role in helping students become responsible, ethical and effective users and shapers of AI.

This involves setting clear expectations for AI use, modelling responsible practice, and designing learning experiences through which students progressively develop AI capability and critical judgement.

UQ's shared responsibility, shared boundaries provide guardrails for using AI in Teaching and Learning.

AI Capability and Responsible AI use

At UQ, responsible AI use is human-centred, evidence-informed, privacy-aware, equitable, transparent where appropriate, and accountable to professional, legal, cultural and institutional responsibilities.

It begins with purpose: learning outcomes, assessment requirements, disciplinary standards, professional expectations and ethical obligations. Responsible use means making informed, context-sensitive decisions about when AI should be used, how it should be used and when it should not be used.

Four domains of responsible use

Our Responsible Use Framework (PDF, 87.4 KB) connects four domains:

Using AI responsibly in teaching and curriculum design.
Guiding responsible AI use in learning and assessment.
Developing students’ AI capability and critical judgement.
Preparing students to exercise responsible AI judgement beyond the classroom.

Developing AI capability

Alongside these responsibilities, the AI capability framework identifies four components students can develop through experiences across their program:

AI capable: independently use AI tools with awareness of their limitations, risks and appropriate applications.
Responsible judgement in AI: make informed decisions about ethical and effective use, including identifying, applying and challenging relevant guardrails.
Leading across AI: design and steward AI systems, including appropriate governance and organisational arrangements.
AI innovation: create new AI-enabled capabilities through technology, translational practice or entrepreneurship.

Capability and responsibility develop together. By modelling responsible practice, setting clear expectations and providing opportunities to practise and reflect, educators help students develop both practical capability and the judgement to use it appropriately.

Using AI responsibly in your teaching

Domain 1 of UQ’s Responsible AI Use Framework (PDF, 87.4 KB) focuses on educators’ own use of AI. AI can support teaching preparation and curriculum design, but educators retain responsibility for academic judgement and quality.

In practice:

Start with purpose: explain why AI is being used and how it supports learning outcomes.
Check and refine: review outputs for accuracy, bias and disciplinary relevance before use.
Protect information and materials: meet privacy, security, copyright and licensing obligations, and respect Indigenous cultural authority.
Model responsible practice: make your use of AI transparent and demonstrate the checking and judgement expected of students.
Review and improve: seek feedback, share practice and continue developing your AI capability.
Follow UQ's shared responsibility, shared boundaries provide guardrails for using AI in Teaching and Learning.

Examples from UQ practice

Weerakoon (2025) describes AI-assisted dentistry course redesign, including clearer expectations, patient-centred cases and multimodal resources, with human review for accuracy and context.
Mitchell (2025) explores AI as a verifier, language coach and reflection facilitator, designing support that preserves students’ thinking rather than supplies answers.
Wright and Baruah (2025) examine counselling simulations and other AI tools in dietetic education, highlighting the importance of structured support, equitable access and managing cognitive load.

For a broader perspective, Fitzgerald (2025) connects these practices with purposeful design, human relationships, equity, transparency and accountability in teaching.

Dr Olivia Wright: The AI learning initiative via engagement

Guiding responsible AI use in learning and assessment

Domain 2 of UQ’s Responsible Use Framework (PDF, 87.4 KB) focuses on how AI use is structured, permitted and communicated in courses. Teach responsible use before expecting students to demonstrate it and help students make informed choices that support their learning.

Follow the rules for using AI and guidance for designing and securing assessment.

Make expectations clear

Explain the conditions for each learning activity or assessment, reinforcing the guidance in the course profile:

Permission: What AI use is permitted, restricted or not permitted?
Purpose: What kinds of support are allowed, and why?
Own work: What thinking and work must students undertake themselves?
Disclosure: When is acknowledgement or reflection required, and how should students provide it?
Evidence: What learning must students demonstrate under these conditions?

Use specific examples to explain these boundaries and their relationship to learning outcomes. Where acknowledgement is required, provide examples and direct students to AI Student Hub guidance.

Build shared understanding

Create opportunities for students to discuss different approaches to a task, including completing it without AI. Explore the benefits, limitations and responsibilities of each approach, recognising that students may hold different views about AI. Support students to explain their choices without assuming that everyone must use it.

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 off this work highlighting students’:

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

Resources and examples

Example guidance for students acknowledging AI use adapted from Dr Peter Worthy (PPTX).
Dr Peter Worthy discusses: What does responsible use of AI tools mean?
Pratt and Zhang (2025) provide a case study of responsible AI use in a UQ first-year creative inquiry context.
Taptamat et al. (2025) provide a case study of developing an online module for science students around responsible AI use in partnership with science students.
Introduction to AI, UQ Support and your assessment slides (PPTX, 24.5 MB)

Developing students AI capability and critical judgement

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

Domain 3 of UQ’s Responsible Use Framework (PDF, 87.4 KB)focuses on the knowledge and judgement students need to use AI critically and responsibly. Build opportunities into learning activities for students to understand AI, evaluate its outputs, recognise risks and decide when to use it or not.

Develop understanding and judgement

Help students to:

Understand AI: explore how generative AI produces outputs and why plausible responses may be inaccurate.
Evaluate critically: check claims, sources and evidence, and recognise bias, uncertainty and missing context.
Recognise responsibilities: connect ethical, legal and disclosure obligations to disciplinary tasks.
Make informed choices: explain when AI is useful, inappropriate or too risky to use.

Keep students doing the learning

AI can provide feedback, encouragement and opportunities for practice, but students still need to undertake the thinking, challenge and reflection through which learning develops. Discuss the difference between using AI to support learning and using it to avoid the work of learning. The AI Student Hub’s examples of prompts for learning versus cheating can help make this distinction concrete.

Resources and examples:

Bidar (2025) reflects on developing students' AI capabilities in information systems courses.
Prompts to support students following the steps for writing an assignment (as adapted by David Rowland)
Dr Shahrzad Roohy Gohar: Integration of AI literacy into a first year core course

Developing AI judgement: Responsible AI use beyond the classroom

Domain 4 of UQ’s Responsible Use Framework (PDF, 87.4 KB) prepares students to use AI responsibly in professional, workplace and community contexts. Students need to consider disciplinary expectations, professional standards and the consequences of their choices. Accountability cannot be delegated to AI.

Connect AI use to professional responsibilities

Help students to:

Apply relevant standards: consider professional, legal, ethical and organisational requirements.
Evaluate suitability: check outputs for accuracy, quality and relevance to the situation.
Consider consequences: assess risks to safety, privacy, equity and public trust.
Justify decisions: explain whether AI should be used, under what conditions and when the risks are too high.
Retain human accountability: recognise which decisions cannot be delegated to AI

Students will encounter AI in professional, workplace and community contexts where errors, bias, confidentiality breaches or poorly justified decisions may affect other people. Responsible AI education should therefore help students connect university learning with disciplinary standards, professional obligations and public trust.

We need to prepare students to:

apply disciplinary expectations and professional standards
protect privacy and confidential information
check outputs for accuracy, quality and suitability
recognise when the risks of using AI are too high
maintain human judgement in decisions that affect others
explain and justify their decisions about AI use
accept responsibility for the resulting work or decision.

Embedding AI capability across a program

AI capability and responsible judgement develop through connected experiences across a program, rather than a single activity or course. Foundational concepts can be centrally supported, with courses providing opportunities to apply and demonstrate learning in disciplinary contexts.

UQ is beginning work to embed AI capability development in consistent ways across programs. This brings together the AI capability framework and Responsible Use Framework, connecting practical capability with ethical judgement and professional responsibility.

As this work begins, program teams can consider:

Where do students already encounter, use and critically evaluate AI?
How do these experiences build on one another across courses?
Where do students learn to justify their choices, including deciding not to use AI?
What gaps or opportunities need attention?