Generative AI at Queen Mary: Building Community, Capacity and Confidence
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is transforming higher education, presenting both immense potential and complex challenges for teaching, learning and assessment. We aim to empower staff to use GenAI in an informed, critically reflective and ethical way, ensuring that it enhances rather than undermines educational excellence, in alignment with the Queen Mary core values.
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is transforming higher education. This emerging technology presents both immense potential and complex challenges for teaching, learning and assessment. As Innovation & Learning Manager in the Queen Mary Academy, I’m focussed on supporting educators to explore the potential benefits, drawbacks, and ethical considerations of GenAI in teaching, learning, and assessment. We aim to empower staff to use GenAI in an informed, critically reflective and ethical way, ensuring that it enhances rather than undermines educational excellence, in alignment with the Queen Mary core values.
Building on an existing foundation, we’ve redeveloped our AI Community of Practice into a dynamic and collaborative space where members can explore GenAI’s implications across disciplines, share strategies, and learn from one another. While GenAI is a fast-moving and sometimes overwhelming topic, we’re making engagement as accessible as possible. Through ongoing discussions, shared resources, and collaborative projects, we are creating a community where experts and novices, enthusiasts and sceptics all feel welcome, and where members can explore practical applications in a low-pressure, supportive environment.
Alongside this, and in collaboration with the Centre for Excellence in AI in Education, we are developing a new suite of training materials for Queen Mary educators, which will equip staff with the competence and confidence not only to know how to use GenAI tools, but when, why, and whether it is appropriate to use them. This distinctive Queen Mary approach embeds critical thinking, academic integrity, and real-world application into our students’ education. With rapid and continual developments in AI policy, regulation, and practice across the higher education sector, Queen Mary is committed to staying at the forefront of these changes. We want our staff to feel confident in making informed, ethical decisions about its use in their own teaching and research in a way that enhances our students’ educational experience.
One of the most exciting aspects of this work is seeing how Queen Mary educators are already integrating GenAI in ways that reflect their discipline’s unique needs. In the School of Business and Management, it’s being used to develop data analysis skills, and enhance decision-making processes within a simulated organisation. In the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences, it's being implemented within a Virtual Reality environment designed to enhance diversity and inclusion. Meanwhile, a group of talented Queen Mary students are currently exploring student perspectives on GenAI as part of the Academy’s Learner Intern Programme, investigating how usage differs across disciplines.
As AI continues to evolve, we are committed to developing approaches that enhance educational excellence, prepare students for AI-integrated workplaces, and uphold academic integrity. Through our community-based approach, targeted training, and cross-disciplinary collaboration, we aim to position Queen Mary at the forefront of thoughtful, ethical integration of GenAI in higher education.
Get in touch
Are you a Queen Mary staff member who wants to join the conversation? Email qmacademy@qmul.ac.uk to find out more about the Community of Practice and how to join.
Innovation and Learning Manager, Queen Mary Academy