Rachel Forsyth
Unit for Educational Services, Lund University
Responses
Sometimes it feels as if AI arriving has sucked all the joy out of being a teacher.
Is it just GenAI, or was that the last straw? It's always worth remembering that even though we can't always change things that are happening to us, we can change the ways we respond to them. Many years ago, I used to start workshops with a really cheesy activity: close your eyes and try to remember why you liked teaching in the first place. It was a private activity, so I didn't ask people what they thought about (potentially just their shopping lists or their dislike of cheesy workshop activities) but I liked to imagine they were thinking about how they liked young people, how they enjoyed talking about their subjects, how varied the job can be, or the challenges of solving problems. Then we used to talk about the gaps between then and whatever new thing I was probably inflicting on them (in that case, a huge curriculum reorganisation which everyone was very cross about). The point about the activity was to try to restart discussion from the point of view of someone who enjoys their role and has yet to discover the special challenges which come with working in a very large and very complex organisation. One thing I am sure about is that grumpy and joyless teachers have a negative effect on students, although it is very hard, both ethically and practically, to collect reliable data on this. In research, we usually look at the opposite situation, and ask students what makes teachers effective and approachable, and being open and friendly is very important (Glessmer et al, 2025, Felten and Lambert, 2020, which both have many references to other related work). So it's important to get the joy back. So maybe my activity was cheesy, but I encourage you to try it now. What is it you like about your role? And then, what specifically is GenAI doing to suck the joy from it? Then, what agency do you have to get your joy back? For instance: I love seeing my contribution to students' development and academic success vs I hate that some of them hand in work which is generated by an AI product . What can you do here? As Mirjam says, the first step is to talk to students. Let them know that AI slop or even good AI output is not what you want to see. You want to see their work, however wrong or badly constructed or off-topic it is. Try our Lund University guidance for students or this fun tool which you can use to create student guidance to suit your own preferences about GenAI use. But also, take a step back and look at your examination/assessment process. What incentivises students to use GenAI? Did they forget a human would be grading it? - Tell them how much you want to see what they can do. Use peer review and feedback on drafts or sections to encourage human engagement with the tasks and the drafts. Are they desperate to get a good grade? - Use your time to give them feedback at a draft stage and don't bother with feedback on the final submission, unless it is a fail. Are they uninterested in the topic of the task, or do they miss the connection between this task and what they should be learning? Think about how you can make assessment more authentic - which can mean making it relevant, meaningful, and using higher order skills. (Powell and Forsyth, 2024). Talk to them about what they will learn from this task, and how it can be used in future parts of the course and in their future lives. Show your own huge enthusiasm for the topic (even if some acting is required). This challenge is qualitatively no different from others we've faced as teachers in the past. In my professional lifetime, the internet was going to destroy higher education. Open online courses were going to destroy higher education. The pandemic threatened to destroy our whole approach, gave us huge teaching challenges and definitely had an impact on our confidence and morale, but we got through it and campuses are busy again. League tables, impact factors, increasing student numbers have all contributed to the pressures, but we've learned to adapt to different external factors. Students come to us for knowledge, inspiration, structure, and human contact. Don't let the GenAI products steal those things from all of us! We are the ones who are responsible for the fun and joy in teaching, and we can get them back. Felten, P., & Lambert, L. M. (2020). Relationship-rich education: How human connections drive success in college. JHU Press. Glessmer, M. S., Persson, P., & Forsyth, R. (2025). Engineering students trust teachers who ask, listen, and respond. International Journal for Academic Development, 30(1), 106–119. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2024.2438224 Powell, S., & Forsyth, R. (2024). Generative AI and the implications for authentic assessment. In S. Beckingham, J. Lawrence, S. Powell, & P. Hartley (Eds.), Using Generative AI Effectively in Higher Education: Sustainable and Ethical Practices for Learning, Teaching and Assessment (pp. 97–105). Routledge. Contact me directly if you would like a copy of this chapter.
My student wants to connect Claude to Canvas -- what do I say?
Thanks for this question, it raises many questions we need to answer! First, it’s great that your student is able to come and talk about this, rather than simply doing something which may not be acceptable, so I hope you are able to continue with an open dialogue. I think it’s important to ask them exactly what they want to do, and why. My interpretation of the request, and this needs to be checked with the student, is that they want to give Claude access to Canvas as if the software, Claude, were the student. Then Claude reads the materials in Canvas, answers questions, looks for deadlines, etc. “Being used to working with Claude” isn’t a good reason to allow this request: we structure our courses and teaching intentionally so that students challenge themselves during learning, and that shouldn’t be outsourced to an LLM. However, there could possibly be an accessibility reason the student wants to do this. I can’t think of one right now, but it would be good to ask them so that we can consider whether it is a legitimate request or not. For instance, if it is for text to speech, so they can have pages read out, this is already integrated into Canvas or they can access help from the educational support team for more specialist software. Even with more detail, I don’t think this is going to be an acceptable request, but it might help to identify any accessibility issues. I’ve already mentioned a pedagogical objection, but there are also two potential legal objections (and I am not a lawyer so we will need to follow up). The first problem it raises is that it probably means putting their university ID and password into Claude. This might be different at other universities but LU staff, if they look hard enough, can find this document which has a section about students too: https://www.staff.lu.se/sites/staff.lu.se/files/2023-05/Guidelines-on-information-security-at-Lund-University.pdf which says “Passwords must not be disclosed or stored in such a way that it may become accessible to others” (STYR 2017/947, Appendix 2, section 4.1). A system such as Claude which is not procured (upphandlad) by the university does not represent a secure environment and the passwords could become accessible to others. In addition, breaches to the Claude systems will not be notified to the university. Secondly, the materials in the Canvas area are subject to copyright and may not be shared with external people or systems without permission. Personal data on other students may also be available in the Canvas area and under the GDPR may only be saved for legitimate purposes “Personal data may only be processed to the extent and for the purposes that are included within the scope of study.” (STYR 2017/947, Appendix 2, section 3). I hope this helps, sorry it was a bit long!
What happens to data that I (involuntarily) provide to a GenAI tool?
What's happening here is that your employer has an institutional contract with Microsoft to give you access to Copilot. If your name and role are used, it's because those are considered part of institutional knowledge as part of your Microsoft account. Alongside the contract, there is a data processing agreement which controls where that information can be shared - which is usually only within the institution. The agreement should also say that your name/ID are unlinked from the queries you make, so cannot be sent outside the university (since the ID needs to be linked back to the response Copilot makes, you have to wonder if it is actually possible to recreate that link), and also that your queries will not be used for future Large Language Model training. Some types of Copilot contract also allow Copilot access to all of your Microsoft managed files: Outlook for email, OneDrive for documents, OneNote for notes, and so on. You should know if you have this access, since it costs extra and someone will have checked up whether you want it. So a question to Copilot might bring a response which references files you have saved. If you are wondering why anyone would want this, it could be useful for helping you to pull together relevant information. Requests like "list all the files which are related to X project" might bring up some (ahem) misfiled items or meeting notes you have forgotten, or help you combine information from different types of files (Excel and Powerpoint, for instance). But if you have this option and find it creepy, ask someone to cancel your subscription: every little helps the university budget! Whilst personal information you hold in a limited way for the purposes of your job should be secure within this kind of data agreement, you can move files you definitely don't want the GenAI product to have access to into a different location which Copilot does not have access to (e.g. the hard drive of your computer). If you aren't sure what is allowed, check with your organisation's data controller. It's worth noting that this is a question where digital inequalities rear their heads, alongside very reasonable concerns about data privacy. Students may not have access to this 'safe' way of using a GenAI product with a reliable data processing agreement. Just using the free versions of products may put them at risk of their chats being exposed in security breaches, used for training, and they may, intentionally or not, also be sharing copyright, personal or sensitive data more widely by uploading to a GenAI product. They may also not have access to the most recent version of the products, but that isn't the focus of your question.
Should a student use GenAI to polish their text?
The instruction that it's ok to use GenAI to 'polish the text' seems pretty common in higher education research, from bachelors to doctoral level. I recently read this in an explanation of how someone used GenAI "I used AI tools, as is accepted academic practice, to check phrasing and suggest alternative wording." (I'm not providing the source for this because it was in the context of someone defending GenAI use and I don't want us to be distracted by this particular example). I would dispute that it is accepted academic practice in all disciplines, but this depends on one's interpretation of checking and polishing. It is definitely accepted to use a thesaurus to suggest alternative word choices, for instance, and GenAI might offer this plus some help with choosing more common prepositions or verbs or context to make the alternative words sit better in the sentence. If you are writing in a second or third language, you might lack confidence in every single sentence. And as checking individual words is a tedious process, the temptation to do a block check and replace of the whole document is surely very, very, high. How many words need to be changed by the GenAI product for this to become more than checking and polishing? My experience in reviewing scientific papers in education is that it is very easy for a document to look polished but for paragraphs to lose their connection to one another, making the whole very difficult to read. Here's what I suggest: the student and supervisor need to talk about what they mean by these kinds of vague phrases. Try out different approaches together with your real text, and discuss what happens to the text and if the final output is acceptable in your discipline area. Just having the conversation and practice will help you both to come up with a definition which works for your research, and will help the supervisor give more specific advice to the next student.
Pros and cons of using AI-generated podcasts as teaching materials?
I also picked up on the 'students aren't reading any more' point that Mirjam mentioned, and wanted to add a suggestion, to think about cultivating a culture of reading in your classes. One obvious way is for you to talk about why reading is important to learning, and you can also build in discussions about what has been read into class. This paper from Norway (open access) looks at academic reading as a social practice, and includes a template for organising the activity: Afdal, H. W., Spernes, K., & Hoff-Jenssen, R. (2023). Academic reading as a social practice in higher education. Higher Education, 85(6), 1337–1355. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00893-x . If you don't feel like reading the whole paper (I do realise that is ironic in the context of this question, but you may not be an education researcher!) then this extract may be useful: "The initial aims when developing the design of the academic reading seminar were that the activity should. Provide an environment where academic reading is a social activity Initiate critical academic reading for the purpose of understanding, not just remembering Initiate critical discussions on research methods, quality of academic texts, genre, and trustworthiness in academic texts Provide the opportunity to connect resources acquired through academic reading with the genre of the discipline Give opportunities to make sense of, and use theoretical and professional concepts (meaning making) actively in discussions Initiate discussions where the students might relate research to their teaching practice and vice versa" Give it a try!
I am worried about the environmental impact of using AI. How bad is it really?
This is a good website to use with students : What Uses More? Compare the environmental footprint of digital tasks It leads to discussion about how we consume digital resources more generally. Those students who refuse to use GenAI for environmental reasons should have a right to do so, but should they be refusing other things too? And are they potentially missing out on learning about/with/for certain things which are genuinely important in the curriculum? The answers are context-specific and should be discussed with colleagues and students.
How can I approach a student if I suspect that they have used AI in ways that aren’t allowed (but I don’t have proof)?
The first question in a Swedish context is "are you being misled?", since that's how we consider academic dishonesty. In other countries, cheating may have a more specific definition with institutional rules about what constitues dishonesty, so check those rules first. If you are being misled, then somewhere it must have been communicated to the student that using GenAI is not allowed. Then, you have to reliably detect it, which as Mirjam has already said, is pretty much impossible. It's possible to invite all students in for a discussion about their work after submission, to probe their understanding and adjust the grade, but in many countries, including Sweden, it's not ok (legally) to single out specific students for this based on your suspicions, so you'd need to talk to all of them individually. Probably not feasible. So take Mirjam's good advice, but don't stress over what's already happened. If the examination/assessment was critical (might lead to serious consequences like a collapsed bridge or the wrong medication) it would already have been supervised. But plan differently for next time: 1) Be very clear from the beginning of the course what is acceptable, and why. Try our 'CanAI' tool to generate useful guidance for students. Have a look at this guidance for students which is freely available and which attempts to explain why we might have certain expectations. 2) Review your grading criteria to include the quality of writing/communication and downgrade bland slop-type output (words like original, thought-provoking, contextual might help you here) 3) Consider changing the assessment to include information about how GenAI was used as part of the methods of the work, to encourage honest declaration and discussion. This might be possible as part of the assignment description, so that you don't need to change the entire course plan / module specification. 4) If it's logistically possible, consider a formative submission where you can give early feedback on a draft which can include comments like "this doesn't look like your own voice" which is then just a comment and not linked to a grade. You can use most of your feedback effort at this stage and tell students they will just get a grade on the final submission, because the formative feedback is relational and thus more useful (Winstone et al 2026). Winstone, N. E., Gravett, K., Bearman, M., Noble, C., Jensen, L. X., Jones, A., & Nicola-Richmond, K. (2026). The care-full craft of feedback in an age of generative AI. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2026.2643333