Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly shaping how we teach, learn, and create across UAL. This blog series called “Getting Started with AI” is designed to help you explore its potential in a structured, practical way, starting from where you are now, regardless of your prior experience.
Each post in the series will introduce a different way AI can be used in creative education, from supporting idea generation and critique to enhancing assessment and feedback practices. Alongside these examples, you’ll be encouraged to think critically about the role of AI in your discipline, considering both its opportunities and its limitations.
Crucially, every post will include a short, practical exercise. These are designed to give you hands-on experience with AI tools or approaches, while also prompting reflection on how they might fit into your own teaching context. By combining practical exploration with critical reflection, the series aims to support you in developing a confident, thoughtful approach to using AI in your practice.
A short practical exercise
Before diving deeper, take some time to explore UAL’s dedicated AI and Arts Education resource. This site provides a shared institutional foundation for thinking about AI.
Step 1: Begin with UAL’s Position Statement on using AI in teaching and learning, which outlines UAL’s stance on the role of AI in creative education. As you read, consider how the principles resonate with your own teaching context and disciplinary area.
Step 2: Take a look at the Student Guide to Generative AI. This resource is particularly helpful for understanding the expectations and guidance students are receiving. Reflect on how clearly these expectations are communicated in your own teaching materials and where you might need to reinforce or clarify them.
Step 3. Consider these questions before you move onto the next post on using Copilot Chat in creative arts education:
- How useful is it to have a position statement on the use of AI at UAL?
- Is there anything you particularly like or dislike in the statement?
- How could you use the Student Guide to Generative AI with your students?
Final thoughts
Taking a structured, exploratory approach to AI, as outlined in this series of blog posts, can help demystify what might otherwise feel like a fast-moving and complex area. At the same time, these resources are not intended to be static or prescriptive. They provide a foundation, but your critical engagement with them is what brings them to life in practice. Reflecting on how they resonate (or don’t) with your discipline, your students, and your teaching approach is a key part of developing a meaningful and context-sensitive use of AI.
As you move forward, the goal is not simply to adopt AI tools, but to integrate them thoughtfully or make informed decision about why they are not appropriate in a learning context. Even small steps, such as testing a prompt or opening up discussion about AI in your classroom, can contribute to a more confident and nuanced practice.
In the next post, you will begin exploring this in action through using Copilot Chat in creative arts education.
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