Grant Recipients
Laura Williams, Faculty of Health
Michelle Ogrodnik, Kinesiology and Health Sciences
(Project timeline: November 2024 - October 2025)
Description
This project aims to collect quantitative and qualitative data regarding use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) from students and instructors within the Faculty of Health (FOH) and individuals employed in health-related employment sectors. This study will provide insights into different usages of GenAI within and between these groups, identify potential gaps in student education, and provide guidance for future assessment design incorporating GenAI. For example, students may be asked to use GenAI in their volunteer, cooperative, or employment positions. By elucidating GenAI’s current implementation methods in health-related employment sectors, we can provide better strategies for incorporation of GenAI into FOH classrooms and assessments (for interested instructors) to better prepare students for their cooperative work placements, volunteer positions, and their employment beyond the University of Waterloo. This work may also promote other Faculties or Departments to examine their own discrepancies.
Project Objectives
Objectives:
- Examine how current UW undergraduate and graduate students in the FOH are being asked to incorporate GenAI in their courses
- Examine how UW instructors in the FOH are incorporating GenAI into their courses
- Examine how employees in health-related employment sectors are currently using GenAI in their role, and how they foresee its future use
- Develop recommendations for FOH instructors for incorporating GenAI into coursework in meaningful and applicable ways to assist students when entering the workforce (based on assessment of above surveys)
Research Questions
Students’ Use of GenAI
- How have courses inside and outside of the FOH incorporated the use of any form of GenAI? Includes in-class activities, research purposes, or assignments.
- If students are, and how they are, using any form of GenAI in their cooperative work placements, in other health related employment, or volunteer experiences?
Instructors’ Use of GenAI
- How are instructors currently incorporating the use of GenAI in their classrooms?
- What do instructors know about how GenAI platforms are being used in their respective fields within (and beyond) their areas of expertise within health-related employment sectors?
Employment Sector Use of GenAI
- If employees are, and how they are incorporating the use of GenAI as part of their employment, and how do they foresee using it in the near future?
- Do individuals currently employed in health-related employment sectors feel that learning how to use GenAI software is a skill that students should be acquiring prior to entering the workforce, either now or in the near future?
Overarching Goal
The overarching goal of this project is to assess possible discrepancies of adoption of GenAI use across these three groups (students, instructors, health-related employees), and to develop Faculty of Health centered instructional recommendations on the incorporation of GenAI tools within courses to enhance student learning experiences and to prepare them for the workforce. To be clear, the goal is not to force the incorporation of GenAI. The goal is to provide instructors who want to use GenAI with research driven information and examples on useful means of implementation for students based on the current workforce use of GenAI.