DELEGATION OF RESPONSIBILITY IN NORDIC UNIVERSITIES’ GEN-AI POLICY A Qualitative Content Analysis of Five Nordic Universities’ GenAI Polici

Abstract

Since the release of ChatGPT to the public in 2022, and the subsequent development and massification of GenAI tools, higher education institutions have had to rapidly deploy policy responses to attempt to control its use in various aspects of academic practice. The global trend in GenAI policy for universities veers towards embracing the technology and encouraging students, teachers, and other stakeholders to incorporate it into their practices. However, the same policies also usually identify GenAI-related concerns such as GenAI unreliability, risks to academic integrity, or risks to privacy and security. Research indicates that these concerns are routinely left to be addressed by the stakeholders, which raises the question of how they are ascribed responsibility in GenAI policy documents. Through a qualitative content analysis of 17 GenAI policy documents from Aarhus University, University of Helsinki, University of Iceland, University of Oslo and Stockholm University, the present study seeks to uncover the explicit and implicit delegations of responsibility to address GenAI-related concerns, and to compare these universities’ approaches. The results show that the five universities adopt a similar strategy of delegating the responsibility to address GenAI-related concerns to stakeholders.