Every session, it’s important to review subjects to ensure that they are fit for purpose and up to date. With the advent of Generative AI (GenAI), this task takes on additional importance. In this blog post, we’ll guide you on how to prepare for a strong start to the Autumn 2025 teaching session. This includes information about how you can start addressing and incorporating GenAI if you haven’t already.
Remember, you don’t have to change everything all at once. Small-scale incremental steps in the right direction each session is a good goal. These steps will have immediate impact, while also improving the student experience and reducing the work required during more comprehensive curriculum reviews later.
Reviewing subjects: the 5 Fs framework
A useful framework for reviewing your subjects is the ‘Five 5s’.
- Fit: Are the subject content, activities and assessments designed to address the Subject Learning Outcomes (SLOs) for your subject? Do the assessments assess the Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs) that have been mapped to the subject? This can sometimes drift over time, so it is a good idea to check.
- Frequency: Are you over-assessing (more than two or three assessments) or assessing in ways that create unsustainable workloads for students or staff?
- Format: Are you using a variety of learning activities and assessment types?
- Feedback: Have you built in appropriate time for feedback and for student reflection on feedback across the subject, so that students can develop their skills and understanding when preparing for later assessments? Have you considered student feedback from the SFS?
- Freshness: Have you refreshed and updated your content, learning activities and assessments?
GenAI in learning and teaching
From Autumn 2025, it is no longer appropriate to ban the use of GenAI in subjects. UTS takes the position that we need to prioritise preparing our students to engage critically and ethically with GenAI. With no banning in place, it’s important that students have clarity about how and when GenAI can be used in their subjects.
If you want to learn more about the basics of GenAI you can complete this brief introductory Canvas module. At UTS, all staff and students have access to Microsoft Copilot, a GenAI tool that is secure and accessed via your UTS credentials. When requiring students to use GenAI tools, remember to direct them to use UTS’s Copilot environment for security.
- If you haven’t already, develop a plan for talking to your students about GenAI and introduce your expectations around GenAI in your Canvas site and during your first class.
- Specify acceptable GenAI uses (e.g., editing, brainstorming, initial drafts) and emphasise the importance of proper attribution and academic integrity. Get more information and guidance on the Academic Integrity site. There are also useful templates in the Canvas Commons.
- Once you’ve opened a discussion about GenAI use in your subject(s), look for opportunities for students to engage critically and ethically with GenAI tools across the subject. Student interaction with GenAI can be scaffolded through activities such as using GenAI to brainstorm, assigning GenAI a role to engage in role play and dialogue, or engaging GenAI as a critical friend to provide feedback on draft writing or code.
Assessment security
In general, assessments that involve real-time interaction are more secure than other assessment types such as written submissions. For example, Vivas or oral assessments, presentations, OSCEs or practicums with real-time interactive components, or interactive seminars are more secure because they provide opportunities to probe students’ knowledge, skills, and understanding. More secure assessment strategies need to be designed with both staff and student workloads, as well as student accessibility, in mind. It is not necessary nor desirable to convert all assessments into more secure assessment types. The expectation remains that students will always present their own work for assessment.
When thinking about assessment security and assuring learning, you should think more broadly about new or updated ways to assess students instead of trying to make all assessments ‘GenAI proof’.
As you review your assessments and make decisions about security, think about its purpose. Is an assessment mainly intended as a formative task, where students will receive feedback that helps them improve? You can use a wide range of possible assessment strategies for formative assessments, and security may not be a priority in your assessment design.
Is the assessment instead designed more for summative evaluation? In that case, a more secure assessment strategy may be more appropriate. In this case, consider about how you can adjust your existing assessments by building in greater interactivity and opportunities to probe student learning. Where an assessment is secure, this must be clearly communicated to students, and students should be given a clear sense of how the assessment will operate in practice including if, where and how GenAI is permitted. If possible, this should include opportunities to practice the assessment model – for example, through ungraded activities or a prior lower-stakes assessment.
Get support
You can find more learning and teaching development and support on the Education Portfolio Professional Learning site. For just-in-time support, use our live chat service or log a ticket for a consultation.