Generative Artificial Intelligence Resources
The Student Success Centre offers resources, workshops, and one-on-one support to help you build your AI literacy skills and gain understanding of how to use AI tools ethically in your coursework.
This page provides a landing page for students to explore AI resources at the University of Calgary.
Below, you will find a variety of resources to help you with your use of Artificial Intelligence. Resources are arranged by category and are a combination of self-serve resources and links to programming and supports. You can use blogs and tip sheets to gain more information on a topic or strategy. You can practice applying these strategies to your own, or register for workshops, appointments, and AI drop-in sessions for additional learning and personalized support. You will also find links to other AI programming and supports around campus.
AI and Learning
This section provides resources that will help you learn how to effectively use AI to support time management, study-skills, and other learning tasks.
Explore our collection of handouts designed to help you navigate artificial intelligence in an academic setting. These resources introduce practical ways to use AI ethically and effectively for learning and research. Whether you’re curious about how AI can support your study habits, want to understand university guidelines, or need strategies for evaluating acceptable AI use in individual course or assignments, these handouts offer guidance and examples to help you make informed, responsible choices in your academic work.
Check out our blogs on topics related to how AI can support your learning:
Microsoft Copilot Chat is a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool created by Microsoft. It can be used to brainstorm and get answers to questions, organize and summarize documents and generate text, images and more.
There are two versions of Copilot Chat:
- a secure version is available for anyone with a UCalgary IT account. To keep your data protected, you must sign in using your UCalgary credentials. You’ll know you’re using the secure version if you see the green shield (see images below). With the secure version of Microsoft Copilot Chat, you can safely enter level 1, 2 or 3 information.
Sharing confidential or personal information in any chatbot or automated system comes with risks. Using the secure version of Microsoft Copilot Chat offers better security, privacy and protection of data. It also complies with UCalgary policies and standards.
For more information, and to sign in to the secure version of Copilot chat, see here.
AI and Writing
This section provides resources that will help you learn how to effectively and ethically use AI to support your writing.
Explore our collection of handouts designed to help you learn how AI can support your academic writing. While AI will never match the expertise of a human writing tutor, there are ways to use AI to help you grow your writing and editing skills. These resources provide information on the ethical and effective use of Gen AI for university writing. We invite you to review the guidance in these resources and discuss them with our Writing Support tutors.
This section is still under construction - check back for links to handouts.
Check out our blog posts on the topic of AI and Writing:
- AI Is not an Author. You Are.
- Revising Your Paper with the Help of AI
- Using AI for Idea Generation, Outlining, and Overcoming Writer’s Block
- Why Does my Writing Sound Like AI?
- AI in the Realm of Creativity
AI Literacy
This section provides resources related to AI literacy and general considerations for AI use in a university setting.
These handouts are designed to help you build confidence and critical thinking skills in using artificial intelligence as part of your academic journey. They introduce key concepts such as understanding limitations of Gen AI, how AI affects learning, and important considerations when using AI. You’ll find guidance, examples, and reflection tools to help you develop the skills needed to evaluate and integrate AI tools into your university and professional life.
Check out our blogs on topics related to AI Literacy:
AI Supports
This section provides information and registration links for SSC events, programming, and supports to support you in your use of AI.
Do you have an assignment that permits the use of AI? Do you want to learn how to improve your writing using AI?
Writing Support Services offers free individual AI writing consultations for UCalgary students. We'll support you in understanding how you can ethically use AI in your assignments.
During the consultations, you can:
- Discuss your writing process and learn strategies to incorporate the use of AI
- Review assignment guidelines to understand when and how AI may be used on projects
- Work with an tutor on an ongoing basis to improve AI literacy skills
- receive information on writing papers, book reviews or other assignments
- Learn how to appropriately cite and otherwise acknowledge the use of AI tools
AI Writing Support Appointments are available online and in-person throughout the Fall and Winter semesters. AI Writing Appointments fall under Writing Support booking limits. (Students can book up to two writing appointments per-week with a maximum of two writing appointments per day.)
Please Note: The responsibility for adhering to Instructors expectations of AI use falls to the student. If you book an appointment to discuss using AI for for your coursework you must be sure that AI use is permissible for the assignment/course. We recommend bringing course outlines and assignment guidelines to appointments so that the tutor may help you understand what constitutes acceptable AI use for particular assignments/courses.
Join us for AI Writers' Space and share a supportive space with others while learning to effectively and ethically incorporate AI in your writing. Receive feedback on your writing from a writing tutor, connect with other students in this shared space, and add accountability by setting a writing goal.
AI Writers' Space is open to both Undergraduate and Graduate Students. These sessions differ from one-on-one appointments. An experienced AI Writing Tutor will offer drop-in feedback to students each for a maximum of 15 minutes. Prepare for your 15 minutes by preparing a question to ask the writing tutor. Tutors will work with students on a first-come, first-served basis. It is possible to work with the tutor more than once in a session, if time allows.
AI Writers' Space is held in-person in the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Ethics, Literacy and Integrity (CAIELI), located in:
Doucette Library
Education Block 370
2500 University Dr NW
Calgary, AB T2N 1N4
The Student Success Centre offers workshops in topics related to AI literacy.
Check out the SSC Event Page for upcoming workshops and register in Elevate.
Do you need more information on how to book or cancel appointments, workshops, and events in Elevate?
Please refer to our PDFS on Booking and Cancelling One-on-One Writing Appointments and Registering and Cancelling Writing Workshops and Communities.
If you require additional assistance, please visit us in person or online via the SSC Virtual Front Desk during regular office hours.
The SSC is located on the 3rd Floor of the Taylor Family Digital Library (TFDL).
Other Campus AI Resources
This section provides information on the various AI initiatives and resources at the University of Calgary. Each section provides a brief description and links to key resources.
This Library Research Guide supports students' research and learning journey in Artificial Intelligence.
Notable sub-sections include:
- Prompting basics
- Student and instructor resources
- Guidelines for Citing AI
CAIELI is a collaboration between Libraries & Cultural Resources and Werklund School of Education. This transdisciplinary student-focused initiative aims to encourage effective and ethical use of AI on campus.
The Centre’s innovative programs harness the power of AI to personalize learning and empower students to excel. They aim to cultivate strong digital and information literacy skills that will pave the way for academic success across disciplines.
CAIELI offers events and workshops on AI use as well as individual AI consultations (on request).
CAIELI is located in the Doucette Library (Education Block 370) Main Campus.
The Centre for Applied AI is an Department of Computer Science led-initiative to bring together researchers and practitioners in artificial intelligence, providing training, research, and collaboration opportunities.
This initiative provides resources for researcher and students. Student resources include the AI Research School (AIRS), an online program to give students the opportunity to learn about AI and different branches of AI research through hands-on experience and mentorship, and the Artificial Intelligence Club, a UCalgary club for undergraduate and graduate students focusing on AI and its many applications.
This is a webpage provided by the Faculty of Graduate Studies to provide guidelines for ethical and effective use of GenAI tools in graduate studies.
FAQ
Generative AI (Gen AI) tools are beginning to affect our everyday lives, but do they have a place in education? Here are a few frequently asked questions regarding the use of Gen AI in a university setting.
The University of Calgary does not have an institution-wide policy regarding the use of gen AI in teaching and learning. Factors influencing the acceptability of AI use include course or program expectations, instructor expectations, and the particular task/intended use of AI. Although the use of Gen AI is allowed in some instances, you should only use Gen AI after receiving explicit permission from your instructor to do so. Use of Generative AI that violates instructor's expectations is considered academic misconduct, an is subject to disciplinary action. For more information, see the SSC Academic Integrity page.
Gen AI can only be used with explicit permission from your course instructor. You should never assume that Gen AI use is permitted or apply one instructor’s expectations to a different instructor or course. It is also important to note that, even if a course has permitted the use of AI for a certain assignment, this does not automatically allow the use of Gen AI for all the assignments in that course.
Depending on your course’s learning outcomes and your instructor’s expectations, Gen AI may be allowed or prohibited. Assignments are designed to support your learning and demonstrate your personal abilities. Receiving outside assistance (whether from Gen AI or a another person) could misrepresent your personal identity or performance.
You can consult this flowchart to help you determine whether you can use AI in your assignment. However, if you’re unsure, you should talk to your instructor to clarify their expectations.
When used ethically, Gen AI tools can function as learning aids to reinforce your understanding about subjects or summarize information.
If you are unsure if using AI as a study tool is permitted in your course in your course, check with your instructor to ensure that your intended use of AI does not to violate academic integrity policies.
Even if using AI tools is acceptable in your course, you should still be careful when using Gen AI as a study aid. Reproducing any AI-generated information, whether through direct quoting or paraphrasing, will require citation. Additionally, Gen AI can provide incorrect or misleading information, so even ethical use of Gen AI as a study tool comes with risks. It may be helpful to treat Gen AI like Wikipedia: use it to develop your understanding on a topic and point you towards ideas and resources, while being aware of both its flaws and shortcomings.
It is also important to note that, even if you are using AI for study purposes, you should not upload course materials, other people’s intellectual property, or copyrighted material into AI tools. Doing so risks violating copyright laws.
The University of Calgary does not encourage consulting AI detectors or other similar tools. Currently, the consensus is that these detectors are unreliable, often incorrectly flagging human-written work as AI-generated content.
These tools also raise privacy and security concerns, as they often retain uploaded documents or prompt data to further train their models. Both students and instructors should not rely on these tools to verify integrity. Instead, we need to promote transparency and healthy dialogue.
While Gen AI tools might offer speed and efficiency, usage comes with potential issues, including:
- Misinformation
- Bias and discrimination
- Security and privacy concerns
- Significant environmental impact
- Plagiarism
- Diminished learning
For more information about the risks of AI, you can consult this handout.
AI-generated content must be cited. For guidelines on how to properly cite AI tools, see UCalgary’s library guides .
Note that your instructor may also look for other methods of disclosure, such as appendices (to list prompts and outputs) and transparency statements (to specify the tools used and the purpose).
Just as Gen AI can be used to facilitate learning, it can also be used to facilitate teaching. Gen AI tools can be useful in tasks such as planning lesson structure, creating worksheets, generating random examples, and so on. If you ever want to know how your instructor is using AI in their course, your first step is always to approach them with clarifying questions.
Gen AI is an evolving landscape. Policies and regulations are always being revisited and revised, all while the technology continues to develop.
This page contains a variety of online resources and information about in-person AI supports.
If you have further questions, or if you want support for effectively and responsibly integrating gen AI into your studies, don’t hesitate to contact the Student Success Centre.
Blogs and News
