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Learning & Teaching Innovation

GenAI for graduate students

As a graduate student, you are expected to exercise heightened responsibility in any use of Generative AI (GenAI), particularly in research and professional work. This includes upholding intellectual and data sovereignty, disciplinary ethics and academic integrity.

Your engagement with GenAI should deepen relevant, contextualized inquiry and support reciprocal knowledge exchange with supervisors, collaborators and communities, rather than delegating your scholarly judgment.

Dos

As a graduate student:

    • consult with your supervisor(s) and committee about expectations for GenAI use
    • make GenAI use transparent in academic work, following disciplinary norms for disclosure
    • think critically if using GenAI as a collaborator to explore and innovate in your discipline
    • treat ethical GenAI use as paramount, especially in relation to data sovereignty, Indigenous knowledge, and community-based information
    • follow appropriate protocols to prevent input of confidential, sensitive, or community-owned data into GenAI tools
    • exercise heightened responsibility for the integrity, accuracy and ethical implications of any work that involves GenAI
    • consider recommendations to use university-approved GenAI tools

Principles applied

Respect

If permission is granted, use GenAI in ways that protect your integrity, sustain relationships with supervisors and communities, acknowledge original knowledge keepers through accurate attribution, and ways that your research impacts the environment.

Relationships

Deepen relationships by engaging supervisors, committees, and communities in dialogue about GenAI, co-creating norms that sustain trust in your research and professional practice.

Relevancy

Ensure relevancy if using GenAI by deepening grounded, context-specific inquiry that reflects the communities, methodologies and professional situations to which you are accountable.

Responsibility

Exercise heightened responsibility by rigorously checking GenAI-assisted work, protecting sensitive and community-owned data and foregrounding ethical implications in your research.

Reciprocity

Practice reciprocity by using GenAI to support your research and thesis writing in ways that share well-attributed insights back to your scholarly and community contexts, strengthen collective knowledge, and respect disciplinary and community norms.

Further resources