On 20 October, the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency (AQU Catalunya) and the Interuniversity Council of Catalonia organised the event “Integrity in Teaching” at the University of Lleida (UdL). The session was intended for technical, management and administrative staff, teaching and research staff and students from universities across the Catalan university system.

The event is part of the series “University Quality and Integrity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. In response to the major challenges posed by the introduction of AI into the classroom for both teaching staff and students, the session provided an opportunity for dialogue through a roundtable discussion featuring university lecturers. Knowledge and experiences were also shared in three working groups, which drew more than 900 registered participants.

Mercè Gisbert, director of AQU Catalunya, thanked attendees for the warm welcome and reminded them that “AI will be what we want it to be.” “We must embrace it as an opportunity rather than a threat,” she stressed.

UIC, one of the organising universities

Dr Joan Hernández, a lecturer in the Faculty of Communication Sciences and lead member of the Observatory on Artificial Intelligence and New Technologies, and Marta Ferron, a Physiotherapy lecturer and doctoral student in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, represented UIC in the introductory roundtable held at UdL. Both lecturers emphasised the importance of assessing the learning process, not just the outcomes, in response to the rise of AI.

“We must seize the opportunity presented by AI to rethink the learning environments we have created. We want to share spaces in which the learning experience itself is part of the assessment, rather than focusing solely on outcomes,” Joan Hernández noted.

Marta Ferron, who combines her teaching role with her experience as a student, added her own reflections: “We have focused our efforts on protecting ourselves from AI, detecting it or limiting its use. I’m a paediatric physiotherapist and, while AI can help me develop treatment plans in a matter of seconds, I’m the one who examines the child and talks to their family. We need to stop competing against AI and start assessing students’ process, reasoning and ethics,” she added.

When asked how to maintain university quality in the current context of AI use, both UIC lecturers cautioned against the risks of an exclusively outcome-based assessment. “We can produce excellent work without attaining an equivalent level of learning,” Hernández pointed out.

“For years, we’ve been seeing that, sometimes, the goal of using new technologies is not to learn, but simply to submit an assignment and move on to the next one. AI has taken this trend to the extreme, and productivity does not always equate to learning,” Marta Ferron argued.

During the event, attendees took part in three working groups exploring various issues related to AI under the title “From Diagnosis to Action: Challenges and Solutions to Ensure Integrity in the Age of AI”.

Also taking part in these activities were Ruggero Colombari, a lecturer in the UIC School of Management; Marta Ferron, lecturer in the Department of Physiotherapy; and Maria Jesús Castel, director of the Educational Innovation and Quality Service (SIQE).

Other attendees included Cristina Monforte, vice-rector for Planning, Quality and Strategic Development, and Gabriel Fernàndez, a lecturer in Humanities.