Embracing an AI-Enabled, Future-Ready Vision

This year has seen some major developments across the College with regard to the way we interact with and use Artificial Intelligence (AI) as both staff and students.
 

Empowering Staff Through Robust Governance

Innovation requires a stable foundation. To provide this, we have created a clear and robust governance approach for AI. The design and implementation of our BDC AI Staff Policy establish comprehensive guidelines for the ethical, legal and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence by staff across the College.

Our goal is to leverage AI as a powerful tool for enhancing (not replacing) teaching, learning and operational practice. Key aspects of our AI implementation include:

Professional Learning: We are actively supporting all staff with targeted professional development and mentoring in the use of AI tools for productivity, teaching, assessment and administration.

Secure Tools: Google Gemini is designated as the preferred AI tool for staff and students, as it ensures all data remains protected within our Google Workspace for Education security framework.

Human Oversight and Privacy: Staff are guided to maintain human oversight, ensuring all AI-generated content is reviewed for accuracy and pedagogical value, while prohibiting the input of any personally identifiable information (PII) into AI platforms.

Student Assessment Guidelines

At the beginning of Terms 3 and 4, our BDC AI Assessment Guidelines have been rolled out to different year levels across the secondary school. Our approach ensures that students (and parents) are given clear guidance on when and how they are expected to use AI within an assessment. This guidance is broken down into two categories: Open and Closed. Where relevant, a BDC Assessment Notification will indicate which parts of the task are Open or Closed. Below are the definitions and an example of a task with these guidelines in effect.

OPEN 
(i.e. where a task or part of a task is defined as OPEN, the use of AI is permitted).

Transparency: For some assessment tasks, you may be required to document your AI interactions using a transparency log or provide a short reflection on how AI influenced your piece of work.

Referencing: You may be required to cite AI both in-text and in a reference list, e.g. a bibliography. Sources found by or directly used by AI should be cited separately.

Accuracy: AI-generated content must be edited, proofread, verified for accuracy and integrated into your own work. You must check each assessment notification to confirm the requirements for recording how you used AI.

CLOSED 
(i.e. where a task or part of a task is defined as CLOSED, the use of AI is prohibited).

A closed assessment task will usually be completed in person (e.g. a test or exam) or within a secure environment (e.g. a locked-down web browser). The use of Generative AI (e.g. Gemini or ChatGPT) for any part of the process is not permitted. Your work will usually be produced in a controlled environment or under direct supervision. The use of AI-powered grammar checkers or paraphrasers is also prohibited unless specifically stated by your teacher or learning plan. Submitting raw, unedited AI-generated text is still considered plagiarism.

As part of the rollout of these guidelines to students, access to student editions of Google Gemini and Gemini Notebook has been enabled for secondary students. Parents of students in these year levels received communication regarding this at the beginning of the respective terms.

Next week, I will be presenting “The AI Co-Parent & Future-Proofing Education” at the next BDC Parent Collective event, where I’ll be discussing our AI strategy here at BDC and the changes we’ve put in place this year to address this transformative technology.

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