A simple approach to introduce first-year students to appropriate and ethical use of Generative Artificial Intelligence tools in the health sciences.

The emergence of easy-to-access (and use) generative artificial intelligence (genAI) technologies has had a disruptive and transformative effect on the tertiary academic landscape, leading to an urgent need to develop student literacy regarding genAI technology. Moreover, while media has placed considerable focus on negative issues related to the technology including factual errors (e.g., propensity to “hallucinate” content), ethical concerns (e.g., assessment impacts and academic integrity issues), and biases inherent in output (data used to train AI scraped from content representing dominant worldviews), the technology has considerable potential to assist students with their learning. Indeed, despite the inherent limitations of current genAI technologies, genAI has the potential to revolutionise student learning, by assisting with:  
1. The comprehension of challenging concepts 
2. The identification of academic sources to inform their studies 
3. Editorial feedback on student writing (among other things).  

Given the rapidly increasing availability and integration of genAI tools into established “student help” sites and tools such as Grammarly, we realised the importance of ensuring our commencing students were aware of the benefits and limitations of these tools. Hence, we developed a lesson plan to introduce first-year, undergraduate students to genAI technology and the ethical considerations around its use. In semester 1 of 2024, students enrolled in a core level one research and study skills topic, completed a workshop focussing on appropriate use and limitations of genAI technologies. The lesson prework required students to read and summarise a short online article. In class, students were encouraged to feed the prework article into a genAI tool, and have the tool summarise its content. Students then compared the genAI summary to their own, and analysed the differences, while also observing for hallucinations and potential biases in the genAI version. The lesson ended with a discussion regarding appropriate use of AI, including how students should, and should not, use it to aid their studies.

At the end of the session, students were asked to complete a survey about their learning and experiences. In total, 26 students responded to the survey, with the majority of the respondents describing the lesson (e.g., learning to use GenAI and appropriate use) as moderately to very helpful. Interestingly,  5 of the 26 respondents noted having never previously engaged with the technology, while many requested further guidance on appropriate and inappropriate uses of genAI technology, in relation to their studies. The lesson helped students gain literacy in this emerging technology by encouraging active engagement with the genAI tool and through critique of its content, while also providing them with an understanding of the ethical considerations around genAI use. Based on student feedback, a logical next step would be to provide further in-class examples of appropriate and inappropriate use of these technologies, and to integrate appropriate use of genAI technology into the various steps across assessment items to encourage authentic, appropriate and ethical use of these tools.