Episode 037: AI at Newcastle University with Dr David Kennedy and Professor Ruth Valentine

Hello and welcome to episode 37 of the Learning & Teaching @ Newcastle University podcast. 

This week Ben Steel from LTDS sat down with Pro Vice Chancellor Education Professor Ruth Valentine and Dean of Digital Education Dr David Kennedy. 

AI text generating technologies have been around for a long time, but they have made significant advances in recent years. Most are trained on extensive data sets and are capable of producing human-like written content quickly and easily. There has been a lot of media coverage of these tools lately (in particular ChatGPT) with concerns raised about the risk they present to academic integrity. 

As with all emerging technologies, it is our role as educators to explore and investigate the opportunities they provide to our students’ educational experience, as well as to consider any potential negative impacts. Ben, Ruth and David discuss Newcastle University’s response to these tools, with a focus on the five principles for the use of AI at Newcastle. 

Thank you to our guests and we hope you enjoy this episode.  

If you would like to get in touch or have an idea you would like to share, please email ltds@ncl.ac.uk and use the title ‘Learning & Teaching @ Newcastle University Podcast idea’. 

Links from the episode 

LTDS and AI – https://www.ncl.ac.uk/learning-and-teaching/effective-practice/ai/ 

ASK Website – https://www.ncl.ac.uk/academic-skills-kit/good-academic-practice/artificial-intelligence/ 

AI in practice – https://newcastle.sharepoint.com/:w:/r/sites/LTDS/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc=%7BFD7661EB-95A4-4E32-AA25-3CBE37193A38%7D&file=AI_live_guidance.docx&action=default&mobileredirect=true 

Newcastle University AI of the Possible week – https://elements.ncl.ac.uk/course/index.php?categoryid=304 

Nutella Community  

QAA and AI – https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/members/maintaining-quality-and-standards-in-the-chatgpt-era.pdf