The AI Assessment Scale (AIAS) provides clear guidelines across five levels, ranging from no AI use to full AI integration, so students know exactly what is expected of them in each assessment. This structure ensures that students use AI ethically and effectively to support their learning while maintaining academic integrity. This page provides guidance on Level 1: No AI.
Level 1: No AI
‘The assessment is completed entirely without AI assistance in a controlled environment, ensuring that students rely solely on their existing knowledge, understanding, and skills.’
You must not use AI at any point during the assessment. You must demonstrate your core skills and knowledge.
Students can think of it as
“I do everything myself, using only traditional tools. I show what I can do without AI —like a closed-book test.”
What’s allowed?
- Personal knowledge and skills
- Use of search engines (without gen-AI overviews), textbooks, class notes, class materials, databases, i.e., Google Scholar, JSTOR, PubMed
- Use of in-class discussions, debates, group activities
- Use of Elicit/SciSpace, etc. AI for sourcing and interacting with academic references
What’s not allowed?
- Use of any GenAI tools to create, structure, write, and/or enhance your students’ writing Note: Please see the University’s Proofreading Policy.
- Automated referencing or citation generation without verification by the student: If used, these must be checked manually for accuracy.
Why/Rationale
This ensures students demonstrate their own knowledge and skills without any AI assistance.
Examples
Lab Reports
Students conduct their own experiments, collect data, analyse results, and write the report entirely on their own. No AI tools are used for any part of the process (except for finding references). Students manually create figures, perform calculations, and draft the report based on their own observations and findings.
Essays & Written Pieces
Students write using only their own research and writing skills. They gather information from books, articles, and other traditional sources. They can use AI to find references. However, they do not use any AI assistance for idea generation, writing or editing.
Presentations
Students prepare and deliver presentations without any AI tools. All research, slide creation, and speaking notes are created by them, based on their own understanding and research. Again, AI can be used to find references.
Other Projects
Students create any other project (such as a painting or sculpture) using traditional methods. No AI tools are used for inspiration, design, or creation. All work is done manually to showcase their personal skills.
What is GenAI?
GenAI is technology that can create new content like text, images, or code, based on patterns it has learned from large amounts of data. GenAI technology includes tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude. These are also called Large Language Models (LLMs) and provide chat-like services to users, in the style of a conversation. There are other tools which students might use, like those which convert text-to-images (e.g. Midjourney, DALLE) and those which convert text-to-video (e.g. Sora, Veo 3).