The following is a transcript of an episode of The Vilest Rag, The Ubyssey's podcast. You can also listen to the full audio on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
[THEME MUSIC]
Sophie Clark
This is The Vilest Rag. I'm your host, Sophie Clark, and you are listening to a podcast brought to you by The Ubyssey, UBC’s student newspaper. This September, approved students registered with the Centre for Accessibility for notetaking accommodations will gain access to the software platform GenioNotes. Genio is a UK-based platform that offers recording, writing and transcribing services, in addition to personalized notes, summaries, outlines and study tools, all powered by artificial intelligence.
Historically, UBC has used other forms of accommodations for notetaking, including lecture recordings and peer notetakers. In the wake of this transition, students, staff and the Alma Mater Society Council have expressed concerns about Genio's accuracy, privacy and quality as a software with AI features.
Today, I'm speaking to Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega, The Ubyssey’s news editor, who has been reporting on the implementation of Genio Notes. Check out the article for further information.
[THEME MUSIC]
Sophie Clark
Hi, Juan Pablo. How are you?
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
Hi. I'm great. I'm very happy to be here.
Sophie Clark
UBC's Centre for Accessibility (CfA) has been using lecture audio recordings and student notetakers to provide students accommodations for notetaking support up until last year. So, what was the purpose of the decision to move to an automated notetaking technology like Genio Notes.
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
That is the crux of the article. We don't really know what their purpose is. If we want to give them the benefit of believing what the Centre for Accessibility itself has said, it's a movement towards modernization. They want to implement new tools, implement things that are more reliable.
One of the things they've mentioned a couple of times is that peer notetakers, as effective as they've been — and there's debate about how effective they've been — they haven't been as reliable as the CfA was expecting it to be. It's hard for them to recruit and maintain student notetakers, and from my conversations and from my reporting, I found that there is a real interest in accessibility and a real interest in providing the services that a lot of students go to the CfA for, and that's at the centre of what they're saying is the reason to move towards Genio.
Sophie Clark
So, Genio Notes. A lot of people might not be familiar with this technology. So can you explain what makes this software explicitly different from something like shared slides and recordings that they had through previous technology, and what are the specific features of this software that will be of use to students who have these accommodations?
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
Something that's very important to mention here, and that people might overlook, is that UBC is not launching Genio Notes for everyone. It's not a thing that's going to be available for everyone. It's only available for students that are registered within CfA with a very specific accommodation, and it's replacing a very specific accommodation.
So it's not like, “oh, I used to record my lectures and then send them to Claude to send me notes.” People are not going to be able to use Genio in place of that, unless they're registered with the Centre for Accessibility.
So it's not replacing any of those systems that students might be using just to help in their studying. It is different because it's a tool that's built specifically for notetaking. It's a transcription technology that uses AI to generate a transcript of what's being talked about in a lecture. It's different because it's built for education purposes.
The main distinction there is that it's not available for everyone. It's just going to be for a very specific sector of UBC students. I can speak more about what Genio is: they are a platform from the UK, from Leeds, and they have been implemented in other institutions. They were implemented at UBCO. Basically what they do is take whatever a professor has talked about in the lecture and turn it into a transcript that students can access and study.
It is replacing what student peer notetakers used to do, which was just take notes and upload them to a system where students that were registered with the Centre for Accessibility could look at them. But [Genio] doesn't work the same way that other tools like Notion, for example, would work.
Sophie Clark
So from my understanding, another motivation could be that it's kind of all organized in one place. You know, the recordings, the fact that it transcribes, that you can add notes to the notes. So there's also that organizational piece.
But has UBC Vancouver specifically trialled Genio notes this past summer, or even the past winter semester in lectures with students and professors, and has it been well received by students as a reliable notetaking tool?
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
One of the biggest topics that I found in my reporting, one of the biggest themes, is that there was no significant consultation with students. This was something that the CfA thought would be beneficial and then implemented. Normally, these kind of changes, and I hesitate to say normally, but a change in academic accessibility, and in academic resources available to students, would routinely go to Senate, which is UBC's highest academic governing body, made up of both faculty and student representatives, and then they would talk about how a platform like Genio is or is not beneficial, and then they would decide if it should be implemented or not, and that would include consultation with students, with faculty, and significant rounds of deliberation.
Genio never came to the Senate — or at least not to the Senate floor. There was no debate on if this should be implemented. From a brief look at the now renamed Library and Learning Services Committee, which is one of the committees of the Senate, and I'm not sure if I'm saying the name right. They just renamed it. That committee did discuss Genio earlier in the year, and it's in their minutes. Not all of the minutes have been released because the Senate hasn't met throughout the summer. They'll meet again in September, but it never came to the Senate floor, which is where the main vote usually takes place, because the CfA has enough mandate over it to just implement it.
So it's not to say that it missed Senate and that it should have come to Senate. It very well didn't have to go to Senate, but it didn't, and that's a part of the consultation that wasn't taken with students.
From what our reporting has found, it did go to consultation with deans. Beginning in January, they spoke with faculty and with deans, and those people did get to test the program before implementation. But one of the biggest questions that students have raised, especially at AMS Council where they had a long conversation about this, is that there was no consultation with students, or no significant consultation with students.
Sophie Clark
When it comes to the AI features and also the transcription features, should students be concerned by the accuracy of these tools?
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
There's three main areas where students have shown concern.
The first one is for STEM students. At the AMS Council last month, they had a long conversation about this, and a lot of STEM representatives from the faculty of science, from engineering, they fell on a consensus that it's not the best program for STEM students.
Archived Recording 1
[In courses] where it's mostly just talking, perhaps in sociology, communications, or political science courses, since Genio only uses audio transcription from the student's personal device. So of course, this is a good step for courses that can utilize the platform effectively.
The science-related problems come up when we get to classes that involve copying work examples from the board or drawing complicated chemical structures, molecules, equations and huge diagrams like we see in the sciences and applied sciences courses.
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
From what we could pick up from their interventions, they are concerned about being able to transcribe and to effectively show graphs and other kinds of materials that STEM students use in their day-to-day education. There’s a lot of concerns about visual stuff more so than what's spoken.
On Genio’s page they say that Genio has a feature called Scribble, and that feature does allow for formulas and more complex transcript elements to be part of the transcript effectively and be useful for students. But that's one of the big concerns that for STEM students it won't be effective in doing the transcription of those elements of their education.
At AMS Council, I spoke to the representative from the Indigenous Student Society. They also spoke at Council, and one of the concerns that they brought up that I thought was a very important concern was that there's a potential for this program to not be very accurate when it comes to transcribing Indigenous languages. In UBC’s commitment to reconciliation, and to doing that work, [this] might [pose] a challenge, and that is a concern that students have brought forward. And again, I'm doubtful of it being effective in that.
The third concern is related to academic misconduct.
Archived Recording 1
One thing I immediately flagged when students got that email — because I have the notetaking accommodation if I need it — is that Genio can include note summaries and some review tools. And what I've been told from my peers is that the transcription struggles to differentiate between speakers. If a student speaks a misconception in a classroom … that can be included in the summary, and then the student is using that tool as a learning opportunity and uses that in their coursework, especially students with disabilities — who have less time and have a lot more cognitive load — if that can lead to a plagiarism case, we've just handed students with disabilities a tool that could actually harm them in the long run.
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
The AMS just presented a report where they said their advocacy office, who helps students when they've been accused of various issues or are having issues in very different realms. One of the things where they help is students who have been accused of academic misconduct, and they come to the hearings with them and they help them deal with those accusations from the university. And they've seen a rise in students coming to them to deal with accusations of academic misconduct related to AI usage. So students are being accused of using AI. They say they don't use AI for different submissions, and then they come to AMS advocacy to get help on dealing with these accusations.
One of the concerns that people have brought up is that when … students are relying on a summary or a mind map that the generative AI might be creating, and it makes a mistake, or it's taking a question that a student asks as something that the lecturer said or it just makes a general mistake, and then students integrate that into their writing and into their submissions for papers, or for exams, or whatever it may be, then they could be accused of academic misconduct unknowingly.
Basically they might be effectively conducting an act of academic misconduct, but it's coming as a consequence of using the program. That's another concern that students have brought forward, and I think those are the main three. But my assessment of this is that it'll all come to the floor when students start using the platform, and students start seeing how it works and if these concerns are real and are valid.
Sophie Clark
Many professors at UBC feel strongly about privacy regarding class content and materials. I've had some professors that don't share lecture slides at all, or let you take pictures, or all of the above. And obviously, they have hesitations about putting their intellectual property into AI software. I was wondering if there are any potential privacy risks of uploading materials like lecture slides, and have any professors raised concerns?
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
Yeah. This is one of the most valid concerns … Privacy is one of the biggest issues. I just spent a lot of the better part of June and May covering Canvas, and concerns about privacy and how we manage information, and what happened with that attack. That is something that's already very blatant among faculty.
Genio has been approved by the UBC Office for privacy. They've been approved for privacy, storage and security purposes, and the information security risk advisors determined that it is compliant with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which is the law that manages sensitive information in B.C. That concern seems to be dealt with. They say that it meets their UBC's information security standards.
So we shouldn't be concerned, according to this information, about Genio leaking the intellectual property of professors or the conversations that are happening in the classroom, so that's not a concern so far.
But another concern is related to how students use this and how intellectual property of professors might be at risk, because as you've said, many professors are very strict on what kinds of technology they allow in their classrooms, fearful of their intellectual property being at risk. Professors have brought up this concern. Again, there was a consultation with faculty in between the months of January and April, and I'm sure this was a topic of conversation at the time.
The way Genio addresses this is by [having] every student that has access to the platform sign a terms of agreement where they say that they will only be using the platform for personal study, and that they will not share, publish, send or exchange the material in any way. Students lose access to Genio once they've graduated, and every time a student is registered within the CfA and they ask for the accommodation which would give them access to Genio, professors would be notified and then there would be a a conversation about what's the best course of action in specific cases where professors are very against technology in classrooms. Those possibilities are still allowed.
One of the actions that has been pursued on a very different road, by the AMS which is separate from the university, is they have passed a motion to advocate for the university to provide funding, so that both peer notetakers and Genio can be possible at the same time, and then it comes down to whatever the student thinks they'll be more comfortable with. In my conversations with students, and from the reasoning of the CfA, peer notetakers have not been very reliable.
I've talked to students who have said they were registered and never got a peer notetaker at all. So that's what they're trying to deal with in this case. But of course there are still a lot of concerns that hopefully will be addressed by Genio having passed the privacy assessments by UBC, and by the agreement that students have to agree to before accessing the platform.
Sophie Clark
From my understanding, Genio Notes is approved by UBC for approved students registered through the CfA. But if you go to Genio Notes' website, anyone can buy a subscription separately and gain all of the same features that maybe something like Microsoft or Gemini or whatever you choose, may not have. Could this be an issue for professors because it is both a transcribing service and also an AI tool? Could this be a concern for UBC in the future?
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
Yeah, it can be a concern, but the decision by the CfA to implement this as part of their accessibility measures doesn't increase the possibility of that being a concern.
People were always able to get a subscription with Genio if they wanted to, or whatever other service they wanted to use. The main difference is that for students registered within the CfA and who are registered for the notetaking accommodation, the platform would be free and it would be paid for by UBC.
Then there's another thing … There's reason to be doubtful if the features that Genio offers to the individual getting a subscription are the same they offer to an institutional contractor like UBC or the CfA. The features might be different because of that reason … But this is a platform that has always been available for students if they've wanted to get it. I don't think that the decision by the CfA to implement it has changed that. It just has made it more accessible for students who maybe thought they needed it but hadn't used it before.
I've also talked to students who have said this is maybe not the best platform. They're not opposed to having some form of AI help in their accommodations, and they're not opposed to the automation of these processes, but they just don't trust the platform itself.
I spoke with one student who said they have used a pen, which had a certain technology — I wasn’t very understanding of the technology — but what they said is that the pen basically did the transcript for them, and then they could annotate. I didn't really understand what they meant by that, but it sounded incredibly futuristic.
My point with this is there's different types of technologies that students are open to. It's not a fight against technology. It's not a concern about the technology specifically, but more of a concern about this platform and that concern is a fear of not knowing. A lot of students have never used this platform, weren't familiar with the platform before it was announced that it would be implemented, and they are concerned about its effectiveness.
Sophie Clark
On that note, there are universal concerns and debates about the use of AI in academia, and like I said, some professors go as far to ban things like Grammarly, and others will obviously just ban the use of generative AI in writing. By agreeing to introduce AI, or an AI-embedded software, UBC has taken steps towards implementing AI in classrooms. Obviously, this is a very reduced pool of people. But do you think that there are greater implications to this decision and what it could lead to at UBC?
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
AI anxiety is all over the place. Everyone is talking about how people are concerned about AI replacing jobs, especially for young adults who are entering the workforce, and think that the different forms of generative AI are going to take away those entry-level jobs. This is a very real concern. We see how our generation has shifted towards a very antagonistic attitude against artificial intelligence.
To your question, I think that one of the things that people might find more concerning about this is that the Senate has yet to — and I'm going back to the Senate because they're the academic body that actually make the rules about how this works at UBC — the Senate is yet to solidify a policy on generative AI use at UBC.
It's been an ongoing debate, and it's been a debate that a lot of student senators have campaigned on and have said it's central to their platform. It's a very important debate, and it's one that they're having right now, and that might be of concern because without that solidified platform, we're unsure as to how a platform like this might impact everyday classroom use. Something that we talked about earlier — about students being wrongly accused of academic misconduct — those kinds of things are harder to grasp when there's no unified generative AI platform. Without that very firm policy, it's going to be harder to know what the consequences of these are.
Then, a second part is that for a lot of students, being a student notetaker was a job. It paid somewhere around $300 per semester per term — not really a lot of money for the cost of living here, but it was an opportunity for a lot of students, a very low cost opportunity for a lot of students, and that is something that effectively might be going away. It's something that has concerned a lot of students.
One of the pushes for the AMS Council when they debated and they passed the motion to try to persuade the university to maintain both Genio and peer notetakers was that [they] wanted to make sure that people have access to all of the tools they might need but [they] also want to make sure that students who might see the notetaking job as an opportunity to make money while they're focusing on their studies also have that opportunity.
When it comes to job security and concerns about AI being implemented in classrooms and taking a bigger role in shaping what we do, those two things are very important. One is the getting rid of effectively getting rid of notetakers, which rids students of an economic opportunity. The second part is that lack of strict policy, which makes it harder to deal with these changes.
Again, it’s a small implementation, it's a very reduced number of people, but it's definitely setting a trend on what different bodies of the university might be implementing, and it's signaling that in the right case and in the right scenario, there is a willingness to implement more generative AI tools that some people might see as harmful, but there is willingness to implement them in the right spaces.
[MUSIC INTERLUDE]
One more thing, which is something that a lot of the students — and rightfully so — it's a conclusion that I myself jumped to, and that different student groups jumped to, including the AMS Council, is that this move towards the Genio, as opposed to student notetakers, is a move to save the CfA money, to save the faculties money — although the faculties don’t have much of a monied interest in this — but my point is, the university sector and the post-secondary sector is struggling. We've been seeing cuts to different faculties. We've been seeing decreasing reserves from different faculties across the years.
It's not a secret to anybody that the decrease in international students has affected the universities economically, and UBC has been affected by this. And from that, people jumped to the conclusion — and I myself, when I first started investigating this, jumped to the conclusion — that there is a monied interest behind this. That the CfA is trying to cut costs, and that maybe peer notetakers were an expense that could be eased, and that is not clear. The CfA has never said that. The CfA has never said that they are trying to cut costs. UBC has never said that they are trying to cut costs.
I tried to get an interview with Wendy Norman, who is the director of the CfA, which was also a bit funny because there's another Wendy Norman who is on Senate and is very active on this academic freedom and academic policy, but they have the same name and they're not the same person, which is a funny coincidence. But when I tried to get an interview with Wendy Norman, director of the CfA, she was away and I couldn't get an interview with her, and they told me there was no one else that could speak on it besides her.
So what ended up happening was I sent the university a set of questions, and they responded with a statement, which didn't address a lot of those questions. And one of the questions that they didn’t address was the question of costs. I wanted to know, and one of the things that was very important for the readers to know, was if this is saving the CfA money, and if this is something that the CfA pursued actively. Did they go looking for services so that they could cut those costs? They didn't address those questions.
We don't know if they're saving money. We don't know if Genio might be more expensive or less expensive. It’s just unclear. And one of the conclusions that the AMS Council jumped to was that it was a money issue, and in their motion they were saying, "we should advocate for the university to have enough funding for notetakers and Genio,” because they were assuming that there's no funding for both, and then I guess there’s an assumption that Genio is cheaper than pure notetakers, which is still unclear.
We don't know that. That's one of the things that hasn't come to light in the debate, and it's that no one has ever said that this is for savings. The official reasoning is that this is a modernization, something that has been implemented at other universities, and something that is looking for more reliable notetaking. So I think that's a very important caveat.
We don't know if they are saving money, and for people to interact with institutions and to demand this kind of accountability in terms of the service being useful, they have to know that maybe it's not generating the savings that one would assume with the context of a struggling post-secondary sector and the fact that in many different industries AI has reduced costs for employers by replacing employees. As far as we know, that might not be the case here.
Sophie Clark
Right. Thank you so much for coming on.
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
Thank you. I was very excited. I think news is the last one of our sections to get on The Vilest Rag.
Sophie Clark
We did sports twice before.
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
Yes, and I think you did culture twice?
Sophie Clark
No, not yet.
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
Okay, well we're late to the party, but we're here. We're here, and we'll be here lots.
Sophie Clark
Okay, great. Thank you.
Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega
Thank you.
Sophie Clark
Before we go, let's take a look at this week's stories. In News, research policy reporter Vicky Nguyen writes on UBC's increased carbon emissions despite 2030 climate action goals. Photos are by Visuals Editor Aleah Kippan. In Opinion, Technology Columnist Leah Grossman discusses the manipulation of technology companies in the United States for political gain and the choice to use global software instead, in Move Fast, Break Things. Illustrations are created by Visuals Editor Skye Shen.
In Arts and Culture, August’s edition of the Culture Queue, curated by film critic Selina Hay, offers insight into Vancouver's bustling film, music, theatre, visual arts, and community scenes. Photos are by Visuals Editor Aleah Kippan. In Sports, Women’s Soccer Reporter Maia Cesario and Deputy Sports Editor Sofia Campanholo delve into the continuous success story of UBC's soccer program. Photos are by Visuals Editor Aleah Kippan, and illustrations are by Visuals Editor Skye Shen.
You can read all of these pieces and more at ubyssey.ca, which publishes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In today's episode of The Vilest Rag, you heard from Juan Pablo Sastoque Vega, The Ubyssey’s news editor, and myself, Sophie Clark, The Ubyssey’s audio producer. This episode was edited by Sophie Clark, and the music is by Dylan Fitzhenry.
