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Online Study Skills Hub: Using AI for feedback on your assessment

Competencies essential for academic and professional success

Using AI for feedback on your assessment

The University's guidelines provide some information on the use of AI for different kinds of assessment (page 2).

For the purposes of AI, if your assessment is type 1, then the use of AI will be irrelevant or impossible. If it's a type 3 assessment, then the use of AI will be mandatory and your Academic team will provide you with all the information that you need. 

If you have a type 2 assessment, then using AI will be possible, within certain parameters. The kind of 'acceptable use' rules that might apply, might look like the following. It is important that you check with your module academic team to be sure. 

Use AI to: 

  • Summarise complex topics 
  • Brainstorm ideas 
  • Improve writing & grammar 
  • Find & organise research (always fact-check!) 
  • Quiz yourself & develop critical thinking 
  • Learn to ask the right questions to solve different problems 
  • Prepare for exams

Avoid AI for:

  • Writing assignments, or any part of them, or taking exams
  • Generating fake citations or research
  • Falsifying data
  • Replacing your own thinking
  • Creating entire assessments for you
  • Taking exams or quizzes on your behalf
  • Generating ideas or arguments that you don’t understand (although AI can explain ideas and arguments to you).

Always check the assessment guidance about what is permitted and what is not. AI should not simply do work for you.

 

How to generate feedback from AI?

If you're allowed to use AI for your assessment, then it can be a useful tool for generating feedback on your work. ​ You can ask it to help you with: ​

  • Spelling, grammar and punctuation​
  • Structural concerns​
  • Evaluating your argumentation, logic or reasoning​
  • Evaluating your flow​

Remember to check with your Lecturer if you're not sure if you're allowed to use AI for your assessment.  

You may also want to break down the prompts that you use, and only ask the AI tool to do one thing at a time.

More prompts can be found under Using Prompts and generating feedback

Things to watch out for:

  • Use of personal pronouns and first person: AI might suggest using "I" to express things more directly. This can make your writing clearer, but it could weaken your academic tone.
  • Use of hedging language:  Hedging language (like "the literature suggests" or "it seems that") helps avoid exaggerations within academic writing. AI tools might suggest using stronger language, but this may not always fit the evidence you have.