Guidelines for responsible use of AI in learning and teaching

Artificial intelligence is developing fast, and AI competence is already considered part of civic skills. Using AI is closely associated with the development of a person’s own media literacy. Utilising  AI in professional settings is also an increasingly important working life skill. Working life organisations and higher education institutions study and develop the use of artificial intelligence in parallel. In the future, the volume of equivalent applications and models will increase, and their functionalities will be developed further.

At the Lapland University of Applied Sciences, we continuously monitor the development of artificial intelligence technologies and update our guidelines accordingly. We want to encourage and motivate our students and personnel to use artificial intelligence.

These guidelines are intended for the students and entire personnel of  Lapland University of Applied Sciences. The guidelines include the central principles for using artificial intelligence. Regardless of your role, consideration of principles for responsible use of AI is of high importance. These principles include essential practices based on law. Please, familiarise yourself with the principles thoroughly.

Using Artificial Intelligence wisely supports learning

Using artificial intelligence helps you learn more effectively. That is why AI is often also referred to as supportive intelligence. However, you are always responsible for the content of your study assignments and the materials subject to evaluation. When you use AI tools, you should consider the following:

• Apply AI: You should understand the possibilities of AI applications in learning, working  and daily life.
• Know your responsibility: Develop your AI competence and be critical of what AI produces, because the author, in other words you, is always responsible for what they produce. That is, you are responsible for the content. Do not simply copy what AI produces without considering its accuracy. You should also make sure that any thoughts and ideas which do not have a source reference are your own or in the realm of general knowledge.  Keep in mind that artificial intelligence can hallucinate or produce misinterpretations and incorrect information. You can learn more about the challenges and limitations of artificial intelligence here, for example.
• Read the answers produced by artificial intelligence carefully and edit them so that the text/output reflects your own voice.
• Understand the limitations of artificial intelligence: Artificial intelligence systems are just software and come with limitations. Artificial intelligence lacks conscious content knowledge, understanding or responsibility. Understand these limitations so that you can assess the feasibility of using AI in different situations.
• Adhere to the general ethical principles, such as fairness, equality and respect.
• Always indicate any use of artificial intelligence in your thesis and in RDI activities.
• Discuss your success of using AI with your teacher and give them feedback about it.
• Participate and share information: You are part of the UAS community. Discuss the ethical use of artificial intelligence and participate in promoting responsible use of artificial intelligence.

Your teacher will instruct you in the use of artificial intelligence in different study modules in accordance with the recommendations of Arene’s (2024) Traffic Light Model.

Artificial intelligence in teaching

As a teacher, you are aware of the AI tools available in your sector and how they will impact the future of the sector. As a teacher, you know how to use AI yourself, recognise the practices in your sector and understand how students’ learning can be supported with the help of artificial intelligence. As a teacher, you are able to identify AI use that hinders learning and development.

As a rule, students are allowed to use artificial intelligence. It is important to guide students in responsible and appropriate use of artificial intelligence. This includes students reporting the use of AI in the outputs and being able to critically assess the information it produces. Teaching in universities of applied sciences is based on a competence-based approach. In the context of AI use, the planning of teaching focuses on how the use of artificial intelligence can support learning and the achievement of the pursued competence and how it is connected to the pursued competence.

Arene’s Traffic Light Model and the following may assist in the planning and implementation of teaching that uses AI:

• By experimenting, you will get a feel for how artificial intelligence works in the competence contents of your occupational sector.
• Use the Traffic Light Model to define how AI can be used in each learning assignment. Try various AI applications in advance to see what kind of answers they provide for the learning assignment.
• Prefer to create learning assignments that require activity and implementation, analysis and reflection.
• Instruct students to document their learning process and to reflect on what they have learned and to justify their choices. Feedback given during the learning process improves and supports competence development and enables you, as a teacher, to better monitor students’ competence development.
• Apply diverse methods of demonstrating competence. In addition to text, the output can be in video or audio format, a picture, a poster or a demonstration of verbal competence (by an individual or a group), etc.
• Guide your students to evaluate the  of their content and to combine information from different sources.
• Note the limitations of plagiarism detection programs.

Using artificial intelligence requires responsibility

• Many AI applications are free but require signing in. Do not use your UAS credentials when you create your credentials for such applications. An exception to this is Microsoft Copilot, to which students and personnel of Lapland University of Applied Sciences have access rights. For more detailed instructions on using the Copilot AI service, see here.
• You cannot enter copyrighted materials to AI applications without the author’s consent.
• Keep data protection in mind: Do not enter sensitive, confidential, or privacy-threatening information (name, contact details, date of birth, social security number, student number, etc.) into AI applications and platforms. This means you cannot enter research data containing confidential information into AI applications.
• Keep the data subject’s rights in mind: If you process research data with artificial intelligence, you need the consent of the research subjects / target group.
• We comply with the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, which states that high-risk systems are not developed as part of the studies (including theses).

Using AI in theses, learning outputs and publications of Lapland UAS

Research is subject to scientific research criteria and ethically sustainable data collection, research and evaluation methods (see e.g. Hyvä tieteellinen käytäntö [Good Scientific Practice], TENK, 2023). Please note that the use of AI is also subject to limitations and ethical principles related to good scientific practices (see, e.g. the EU Guidelines)[1]. Note the following at the outset:

• You yourself are responsible for all the material you produce.
• You may not provide artificial intelligence as the source of a knowledge basis, as a text always needs an author (a person or an organisation, not a software or application). Information provided by AI must always be verified, since artificial intelligence may produce misinterpretations and incorrect information. The most reliable information is found in peer-reviewed research publications.
• You can use artificial intelligence in the preparation stage for finding ideas for important themes and the structure of your work and to list research methods, to facilitate finding search words, planning information search, brainstorming and searching information, and to outline larger entities, solve problems, proofread as well as to assist in the analysis of research data, taking the ethical principles into consideration. You must report in the Introduction section, for example, that you have used AI.

• Be sure to refer to the original source. Behind a text, there is always an author (a person or organisation, not a software or application). In other words, AI is not a source of scientific text and the written text content produced by it may not be used as is. The use of artificial intelligence must follow the practices of scientific writing. The ideas, information, words or other material of other people may not be presented without adequate references.
• The use of artificial intelligence does not replace scientific information search and utilisation skills.
• Students are required to report the use of AI transparently in their theses. The use is to be noted in the Introduction section of the thesis or, alternatively, in the Methods section if the research methods include the use of artificial intelligence. The section must indicate which AI applications were used in the thesis and how.[1]
• No artificial intelligence may be used in a maturity test.
• In your RDI work, you should also apply the Lapland University Consortium’s Guidelines, specifically section 3. Using AI applications in research. The guidelines will be published in the spring of 2025.

What is the basis of the AI policies?

ARENE’s recommendations on the use of artificial intelligence for universities of applied sciences.

REGULATION (EU) 2024/1689 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence and amending Regulations (Artificial Intelligence Act).  Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024
laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence and amending Regulations (EC) No 300/2008, (EU) No 167/2013, (EU) No 168/2013, (EU) 2018/858, (EU) 2018/1139 and (EU) 2019/2144 and Directives 2014/90/EU, (EU) 2016/797 and (EU) 2020/1828 (Artificial Intelligence Act) (Text with EEA relevance).

Lapland UAS Code of Conduct

In addition, the use of AI in teaching and learning is governed by the ethical guidelines available on the European Commission’s website.https://op.europa.eu/fi/publication-detail/-/publication/d81a0d54-5348-11ed-92ed-01aa75ed71a1 //

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[1]An example: “The authors used the Copilot version GPT-4 AI tool in the preparation of the text of this thesis to outline the thesis structure and familiarise themselves with and list ideas for the possibilities of the platform economy in Chapter 2.1 of the thesis, and, finally, for proofreading. The authors have reviewed and edited the content created by the tool and take full responsibility for the text content.”

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[1] ERA Forum Stakeholders’ document Living Guidelines on the RESPONSIBLE USE OF GENERATIVE AI IN RESEARCH, First Version, March 2024.