In this edition, we are talking to Steve Brant from the School of Business and Management

• What is your current role at QMUL?

I’m the Digital Learning Advisor in the School of Business and Management

 

• What are you currently working on?

There’s a lot of operational support goes on, but one of the things I’m working on, at the moment, is a solution for intermediate steps in monitoring AI use in assessment. That’s one interesting thing. And I’m also working on trying to find out a little bit more about the Brickfield accessibility tool that’s replacing Blackboard Ally

• Can you just tell me a little bit more about the AI monitoring?

Well, it sounds better, or more complicated, than it is. What we’re looking at is a potential solution. It went through the education committee to look at the way that students can submit assignments and make a declaration of their use of AI tools in terms of improving authorship and or giving ideas.

To explain further, we wouldn’t expect students to get an ‘AI’ to write their coursework for them, and we want to try and preclude that, and one of the steps we’ve taken is to get students to complete a choice activity in QMplus to declare their use of AI in their assignment before it’s submitted. The submission point only becomes open to them once they’ve made a declaration. It’s about monitoring and looking at (AI) usage and it’s not supposed to be a punitive tool in any way, shape, or form. It’s just about getting a better idea of what people are doing. It’s also true to say that for some assignments students are expected to use AI. We’re bringing that into our teaching, so that, in the long term, we want something over and above, “did you use AI?”, but questions like “what AI tools did you use?”, “what queries did you use?”, “what were the prompts?” This is an intermediate tool is just there so we can ask, “did you?”, or “didn’t you?” (use AI in your coursework), and that’s it, really.

• Quick fire questions

What’s your favourite mode of transport?  Motorbike. I have eight motorcycles in varying states of disarray or disrepair, but I have two that are MOT’ed and working and six others. Daily commute to work, is always on the main (working!) motorbike.

And what make and model is it? Well, it’s a Kawasaki ZZR1400. A big beast of a bike. But it’s great fun.

• Books or movies? I think I prefer books, but I see more films, to be honest. I mean, just in terms of the accessibility films – it’s quite high, isn’t it. You just turn it on and watch it and that’s it. But I do gain more from reading books and find them much more rewarding.
• What’s your favourite cuisine? Oh, well, that’s a good one. I think it depends where I am, but I do like Indian food.
• What is your favourite gadget or technology that you’ve owned or used? Right now, this is pretty dull, but what I’m actually quite impressed with having, is a motorcycle lift. This is a useful tool. I’m very much a DIY type person, so I have something in the region of eight electric drills, varying types of circular saws, a table saw. You name it, I’ve probably got one. This is a pretty major league thing, a bike lift. A hydraulic lift for lifting the bike up. So that I can work on it more easily. Not many people have one of those.