Ember Duke | layout editor

At their final meeting of the semester the Student Government Association spoke at length about the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom and how university guidelines can be shaped in light of AI’s persistent existence.

Faith Cook, president, and Braden Niles, vice president of academics said they spoke with Daria LaTorre, the vice provost of strategic initiative, to discuss a possible survey for students on their feelings about AI and how they are currently using it in their studies.

“They’re not trying to take away anything. They’re just trying to figure out what is a good AI policy and what is conducive for student learning,” Cook said to the committee.

Currently, the university leaves AI policies to individual professors, as reported by The Duke earlier this semester. Cook and Niles raised questions to the committee on whether they felt this was a productive way to guide student AI usage.

The committee lit up with responses. Many ideas were floated, including a proposal that each school have a policy and another that each department in a school have its own policy.

On their own usage, many members felt AI is a useful tool and did not take away from their education. Rather, several said it helped them with their academics in ways like studying, information sourcing, proofreading or summarizing information from course readings.

Adam Wasilko, vice president of student life, said the university is also trying to establish an administrative policy on AI that would protect student data. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which states the university is not permitted to disclose student information, prevents administration from putting any student data into AI platforms, he said.

The committee aired out issues with Degree Planner in the Nov. 20 meeting – one being that it was not showing up on the tile page of the student portal. Niles reported that this issue had been fixed and was simply a coding error.

Student satisfaction surveys will go out tomorrow, said Wasilko. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the agency which accredits the university to give students degrees, checks that the university makes changes to improve student experience based on the results, he said.

“That [survey] does go into the strategic planning of the university,” Wasilko said.

Gift cards will also be offered to incentivise students to fill out the surveys, he said.

In anticipation of the SGA election in March, Cook said she hopes to create an additional vice president seat for the Diversity, Inclusion and Identity committee.

The next SGA meeting will be on Jan. 15. The committee is still discussing what time meetings will take place next semester, but Cook said all dates would be posted on the SGA Instagram.