AI Insights: Guidelines on Generative AI in Teaching & Learning.

Van­cou­ver Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege (VCC) Insti­tu­tion­al Guide­lines on Gen­er­a­tive AI in Teach­ing & Learn­ing.
Emi­ly Simp­son, Cen­tre for Teach­ing, Learn­ing & Research

VCC released its Gen­er­a­tive AI in Teach­ing and Learn­ing (RISE) guide­lines this Sep­tem­ber to help instruc­tors nav­i­gate using AI tools eth­i­cal­ly and effec­tive­ly in their work, while seek­ing to min­i­mize the risks in these tools. The guide­lines high­light the con­nec­tion of this work to VCC’s core val­ues:

• Stu­dent Suc­cess: Prepar­ing stu­dents with AI lit­er­a­cy skills for future edu­ca­tion and work­place needs.
• Excel­lence: Explor­ing inno­v­a­tive ways to enhance teach­ing and learn­ing while cen­ter­ing crit­i­cal think­ing, rela­tion­ships, and account­abil­i­ty for out­put.
• Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and Diver­si­ty: Address­ing poten­tial bias­es and cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion risks, rec­og­niz­ing the impor­tance of Indige­nous data sov­er­eign­ty, while lever­ag­ing AI to enhance acces­si­bil­i­ty for diverse learn­ers.
• Stew­ard­ship: Con­sid­er­ing envi­ron­men­tal impacts and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment of AI tools.

Sim­i­lar to many oth­er insti­tu­tion­al GenAI guide­lines, the VCC guide­lines include core prin­ci­ples; con­sid­er­a­tions around aca­d­e­m­ic integri­ty, secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy, copy­right and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, risks and ben­e­fits of these tools; and guid­ance on use in teach­ing and learn­ing. The VCC guide­lines are avail­able as an OER under CC license.

The work­ing group that cre­at­ed the guide­lines was spon­sored by VP Aca­d­e­m­ic Inno­va­tion, Tan­nis Mor­gan, and includ­ed David Kirk (Dean, Cur­ricu­lum and Ped­a­gogy), rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Cen­tre for Teach­ing, Learn­ing, and Research (CTLR), the VCC Fac­ul­ty Asso­ci­a­tion, the Learn­ing Cen­tre Coor­di­na­tor, the Copy­right Librar­i­an, the Pri­va­cy and Secu­ri­ty Coor­di­na­tor, and depart­ment lead­ers from var­i­ous aca­d­e­m­ic areas. The draft guide­lines were cre­at­ed over 5 months of dis­cus­sion, then brought to Edu­ca­tion Coun­cil, Edu­ca­tion Qual­i­ty Com­mit­tee, and our Lead­ers group for dis­cus­sion and feed­back

VCC rec­og­nizes that the guide­lines will con­tin­ue to evolve with AI tech­nol­o­gy and its edu­ca­tion­al and soci­etal impli­ca­tions. CTLR is cur­rent­ly seek­ing to eval­u­ate the impact of these guide­lines through depart­ment con­ver­sa­tions and instruc­tor sur­veys that will take place this year and again in fall 2025.

CTLR has been active­ly pro­vid­ing a vari­ety of work­shops to sup­port instruc­tors with build­ing AI lit­er­a­cy and apply­ing it in teach­ing prac­tice, and also has a GenAI resource page. Please reach out to us at IASsupport@vcc.ca if you’d like to con­nect about this work.

VCC grate­ful­ly acknowl­edges the lead­er­ship and wis­dom of Kwantlen Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty’s “Gen­er­a­tive AI: An Overview for Teach­ing and Learn­ing,” McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty’s work on Gen­er­a­tive AI in Teach­ing and Learn­ing, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Columbi­a’s Draft Prin­ci­ples and Guide­lines for Gen­er­a­tive AI use in inspir­ing and inform­ing the VCC guide­lines.

The author used Claude to gen­er­ate a first draft using our guide­lines as a source doc­u­ment (orig­i­nal text), and then sig­nif­i­cant­ly revised and accu­ra­cy-checked the text.