Supported by D2L and the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association, I wrote a report on the state of Generative AI in Canadian post-secondary education. This was released yesterday and you can find it here: https://www.d2l.com/resources/assets/cdlra-2023-ai-report/ D2L shared the report with colleagues in the US who noted  similar trends in the US context: https://www.d2l.com/blog/how-generative-ai-being-received-in-higher-education/

What is the report about?

The Pan-Canadian Digital Learning Survey conducted by the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association in Spring 2023 received responses from 438 administrators and faculty members, located at 126 unique institutions across Canada. This report examines faculty member and administrator perspectives on Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Findings indicate that:

  1. The development of policies, regulations, and guidelines relating to Artificial Intelligence at Canadian institutions of higher education is at an early stage.
  2. Faculty members and administrators express varying levels of optimism, concern, and uncertainty about AI.
  3. Use of AI appears to be ad hoc, uneven, unequal, experimental, and largely guided by individual faculty, while supported by some institution-wide initiatives such as workshops and working groups.
  4. Faculty members and administrators
    1. anticipate AI becoming a normal and common part of higher education.
    2. emphasize that its value depends on numerous factors.
    3. anticipate that it may lead to further questions around the cost of education.
    4. are concerned about the biases and limitations of AI, including the potential dystopic futures that it makes possible.

Recommendations include the following:

  1. At the institutional level, leaders should further publicize the institutional stance, guidance, and/or policies to faculty members and administrators. Such guidance would be most useful if it supported faculty, staff, and administrators in learning about and experimenting with the technology, rather than controlling and penalizing its use.
  2. At the institutional level, leaders should develop plans and initiatives around AI that account for institutional and disciplinary contexts, including ways in which the institution will support effective, creative, equitable, and responsible use/nonuse.
  3. At the disciplinary, institutional, provincial, and pan-Canadian level, continue engaging in conversations around the limitations and biases of AI, and seek ways to engage with AI designers and developers in order to pro-actively impact the future of this technology.
  4. At the disciplinary, departmental, and institutional level, continue engaging in conversations that address the question “What does ethical AI practice look like?”
  5. At the institutional, provincial, and pan-Canadian level, continue engaging in conversations that center the question “What do preferable education futures look like?” that account for the emergence of AI, as well as the myriad of other challenges that higher education is facing.
  6. At the pan-Canadian level, develop a database of institutional regulations, policies, and guidelines pertaining to AI.