The state of AI adoption at UWA

UWA's approach to generative AI is governed centrally. In 2024 the university established a Generative Artificial Intelligence Think Tank as an Expert Advisory Panel to the University Executive, chaired by Professor Zach Aman of the School of Engineering and deputised by Associate Professor Celeste Rodriguez Louro of the School of Social Sciences.^[1]

The institutional position, articulated publicly by Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience) Professor Guy Littlefair, is built around three values: 'Collaborative responsibility', 'Data-informed and human-driven agility', and 'Sustainable innovation'. UWA advocates a tiered approach to AI tools with differentiated security levels based on data classification, and emphasises 'human in the loop' across deployments.^[1][2]

For student assessments, unit coordinators classify each task into one of three tiers: Tier 1 (no AI permitted), Tier 2 (AI assistance permitted with acknowledgement), and Tier 3 (AI fully embedded in the task). Where AI use is permitted, students are required to include an acknowledgement statement.^[3]

UWA's Academic Integrity Policy classifies as plagiarism 'intentionally or unintentionally using AI and Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) language as if it were your own', sitting the AI policy explicitly within existing academic integrity infrastructure rather than as a standalone regime.^[4]

Bloom is in use at UWA in the Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching (course 30250), a part-time program for tertiary teaching staff. The Graduate Certificate is structured as 24 credit points across four mandatory units: Theory and Practice in Tertiary Teaching, Curriculum and Assessment Design for Learning, Digital Technologies for Learning, and a Capstone for Tertiary Teaching.^[6]

The deployment is coordinated by Professor Mark Pegrum from UWA's Graduate School of Education, who is the convenor of the Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching. Pegrum's research spans digital literacies, mobile learning, emerging technologies in education, and AI literacy, with recent peer-reviewed publications on generative AI in language learning.^[5][6]

UWA has explicitly decided not to deploy AI detection tools. The stated reasoning, from DVC Littlefair, is that 'evidence continues to mount that such tools are unreliable, inequitable and unsuitable for high-stakes assessment decisions'.^[2]

The institutional response centres on assessment redesign rather than detection. UWA established a Centre for Integrity and Impact in Teaching Excellence, which houses the Learning and Assessment Design team alongside the Academic Integrity unit. DVC Littlefair has described the combination as 'somewhat unique' in Australian higher education, with Learning and Assessment Design supporting academics in redesigning assessments before submission rather than enforcing integrity policies only after the fact.^[2]

In 2025, around 350 staff attended UWA's assessment workshops, and the university administered approximately 98,000 invigilated exam sittings, indicating the operational scale at which the redesign-and-invigilate strategy is being applied.^[2]