Starting in September, the Centre for Accessibility (CfA) will replace peer notetakers and audio-recording accommodations with Genio Notes — a notetaking platform that uses artificial intelligence. Students and faculty have shown ambivalence towards the decision.
Students registered with the CfA received an email on July 8 explaining that those approved for notetaking support accommodations will be able to record lectures and generate transcripts, add comments and labels while listening to those recordings, generate personalized notes, import course slides into notes and access features like note summaries — all through Genio.
Previously, students with such accommodations would receive notes taken by another student in their class, who would receive financial compensation in return.
University spokesperson Thandi Fletcher explained the reason for the changes in a statement to The Ubyssey. She said the CfA selected Genio Notes after a “comprehensive review of available supports and emerging practices in disability accommodation.” She added that the decision reflects their responsibility to provide effective accommodations, saying Genio — unlike peer notetaking — does not rely on the availability of notetakers or “student’s interpretation” of course materials to provide notes.
She claimed the AI tool will give students more control over how they “capture and organize information,” more timely access to content and more independence in the learning process.
The Ubyssey also asked if the CfA has been pursuing other forms of AI integration, if rising negative sentiments towards AI were taken into account as part of the decision and how cost differences between Genio Notes and peer notetaking influenced the shift. None of these questions were addressed in the statement provided by Fletcher. CfA Director Wendy Norman was unavailable for an interview for this piece, on account of being on holiday.
Students have made their views public. The Ubyssey spoke with Jaylenn Tourangeau, a member of the Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation in the Northwest Territories, who believes the CfA means well but is unsure of the effectiveness of the shift.
Tourangeau, who is approved for notetaking accommodations with the CfA, said that in their time registered for the accommodation, they have only been assigned a peer notetaker once — a student tasked with uploading his notes to support Tourangeau’s learning who “uploaded one part of the notes, but failed to continue uploading [them].” In this respect, Genio’s anticipated reliability is more promising.
One of Tourangeau’s most pressing concerns is related to Genio’s ability to accurately transcribe Indigenous languages. He said that usually, at the stages of transcription or translation, “things get messed up.” He added that he has experienced difficulties using other transcription services for research projects at UBC. “If somebody is in a language class where the language is not known or isn't common, then [Genio] is not going to work.”
Though Genio’s transcription supports over 30 languages, it does not support any of the more than 70 distinct languages spoken by Indigenous Peoples in Canada. On their website, Genio clarifies they do not provide translation services, and that their transcription tools only create a transcript of the language being spoken.
Punjabi, Arabic and Mandarin Chinese are some other languages taught at UBC that are not currently supported by Genio.
Tourangeau said consultation with students was a step missing from the implementation of Genio, despite generally speaking positively of the CfA’s intentions. “They're trying to find alternatives, but they're not asking what … that look[s] like for those who need them,” he said.
AMS Council seemed to agree with Tourangeau’s position on the lack of consultation with students but rolled back on what would have been material action to address the concern.
A motion pushing VP Academic & University Affairs Jaiya Panchi to advocate against the decision passed at Council’s most recent meeting. At the core of the motion was a directive for Panchi to create a framework for consultation with students and push the university to use it. However, after councillors discussed the approved motion during an access break, the motion was brought back for discussion and the provision was removed.
During the discussion, which lasted just under two hours, Councillors Katherine Cai, Thomas Beer, Josh Bradbury, Katelynn Hubenig and Tourangeau — who represents the Indigenous Students Society — all spoke in support of the initial motion and showed no opposition to its final version — which was approved by unanimous consent.
Most of the conversation was centred on the platform’s lack of utility for natural or applied sciences students and its general accuracy.
The Canvas course provided to students says Genio has a feature called Scribble which allows students to draw diagrams, write equations and create handwritten notes. On accuracy, the FAQ page for instructors says the transcripts Genio produces “involve additional processing time, which allows for meaningfully greater accuracy than real-time captions.” It adds that Genio’s “accuracy benchmarks are ahead of Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon and ElevenLabs.”
Council’s motion will see Panchi write a letter to the university by August 19, outlining councillors' concerns and advocating for the university to provide sufficient funding for Genio implementation and the continuation of peer student notetakers. Panchi will report back to Council in September.
One of the faculty members weighing in on Genio is anthropology professor and faculty senator hagwil hayetsk (Charles Menzies), who wrote on his blog last month after testing out the technology, “my first thought was thank goodness, I don’t have to use this system.”
Throughout his commentary, Menzies criticized the platform's inability to facilitate thoughtful engagement with course materials. “Genio seems to create a platform to assist memorization. It appears to leave higher-order integrative thinking out of the picture. It might be ‘reliable,’ but I fear it may regress too fast to the mean,” he wrote.
In UBC’s FAQ document for instructors, the university says Genio will not use recordings to train AI models, adding “this is a firm contractual commitment.”
The page also addresses potential concerns over intellectual property that Menzies did not mention in his piece, namely about Genio’s specific use of AI, intellectual property and implementation in technology-free classrooms.
Genio's AI Hub — which explains the platform's pledges on AI — says there are generative AI features in the tools that create notes summaries, outlines and quizzes for students. However, it also states that users cannot modify the platform’s own “carefully crafted prompts,” generate audio, images, video or long-form text (such as an essay).
On intellectual property, Genio clarifies that the tool is for students' personal use and that ownership of the content remains with the instructor. The FAQ page also states Genio does not violate copyright law.
For professors who do not allow recording in classes, the page states that “when used by students who have formal accommodations through a disability services office, the use of this technology is an exception that must be made to meet UBC’s legal duty to accommodate.”
Finally, the page refers instructors to the CfA student agreement for using Genio Notes, which students will be required to sign before accessing the platform. By signing, students commit to only use Genio for personal academic purposes, to not “share, send, post, publish, make public, seek commercial gain [from] or duplicate any recordings or transcripts that are generated by Genio Notes,” and to limit capture to academic content to prevent the service from accidentally capturing sensitive information. They also agree to abide by an instructor's request to not utilize the program if the instructor communicates there is a section of the class for which no notetaking is allowed and to abide by an instructor’s request for all students to destroy course notes after the course has ended. (Students may consult with their accessibility advisor in cases of disagreement.)
Failure to comply with the agreement may result in disciplinary action taken against the student.
In her statement to The Ubyssey, Fletcher wrote that in case “Genio does not adequately address a student’s disability-related needs, or the structure or content of a course makes it unsuitable, the student, instructor and accessibility advisor can discuss additional or alternative support.” She added the CfA will work with faculty as the tool is introduced.
As UBC prepares for the fall term, instructors and those approved for notetaking support accommodations will have to come to terms with a new way of connecting students with class resources that some say could not be as beneficial as expected.
