Guidance and support for the use of AI in health and social care and child development
09 February 2024
Sarah Ash and Sarah Millington, Health and Social Care and Child Development Subject Advisors
The rapid and ongoing advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools bring both benefits and challenges to education and assessment. In this blog, we highlight the guidance available for managing AI use in health and social care and child development and how to deal with misuse in assessments.
What is AI?
AI tools generate text or images in response to user prompts and questions. The responses of AI tools are based upon the data sets upon which they have been trained. ChatGPT is the best-known example of an AI chatbot, but many other chatbots and tools are available.
AI is relevant to both health and social care and child development and is already being used to train staff towards working within social care, in order to tackle workforce shortages, as it can simulate human like responses.
There are plans to use AI to help diagnose conditions, such as analysing x-ray images to support radiologists with assessments, which would free up their time to spend with patients. The NHS England Transformation Directorate, has produced a national strategy for AI in health and social care to show how AI can be implemented and what it could look like.
Appropriate use of AI
Whether the use of AI by students is appropriate for a given task will depend on the marking criteria and nature of the task.
It may be useful as a starting point for ideas and discussion that help towards delivery and understanding content within both Health and Social Care and Child Development
Students could use AI to suggest themes or ideas, for example:
- Suggest creative activities suitable for ....
- Suggesting interview questions for interviews
- Suggesting types of equipment for early years
- Writing exam questions for exam practice
It is important that any use of AI to help with initial ideas or research should be referenced. Students need to be made aware of this from the outset.
Inappropriate use of AI
Like plagiarism, AI can be used by students to create work which they then try to pass off as their own work. Where a student has used AI to complete all or some of their work, they are not demonstrating their own knowledge, understanding and application of skills. This may prevent the candidate from presenting their own authentic evidence.
Examples of AI misuse include using or modifying AI responses without acknowledgement, disguising the use of AI, or using it for substantial sections of work. You can support your students by teaching them about appropriate use of AI in health and social care and child development, demonstrating how to reference AI correctly where its use is appropriate, and having clear policies for AI use within your department.
If the student has used AI to provide evidence directly assessed in the marking criteria, this cannot be awarded marks. This will also prevent the student from providing their own authentic evidence towards the marking criteria.
Some examples might be:
- To write an answer to part of or a whole task
- To design a room layout for an early years setting
- To create a presentation for an assessment
- Using AI bots to be a participant in an activity (e.g. communication)
- Creating summary notes of research for use in assignment or exam, such as Unit 25 pre-release
Teachers must be aware of a candidate's use of AI and mark accordingly. If you are unsure whether a student’s use of AI is inappropriate, please contact us.
What to do when candidates misuse AI in assessments
Teachers must not accept work which is not the student’s own. Ultimately the Head of Centre has the responsibility for ensuring that students do not submit inauthentic work.
If you suspect AI misuse and the student has not signed the declaration of authentication, your centre doesn’t need to report the malpractice to OCR. You can resolve the matter prior to the signing of the declarations.
If AI misuse is suspected after formal submission and signing of the authentication sheet, AI concerns within candidate work should be reported with a JCQ M1 form, as outlined in the JCQ AI guidance, available on the Malpractice section of the JCQ website. Please email your completed forms to OCR at malpractice@ocr.org.uk.
Frequently asked questions
Our frequently asked questions for both Health and Social Care and Child Development highlight key queries that have been asked by centres.
Further support
Please refer to the JCQ AI use in assessments: Protecting the integrity of assessment document for further information on managing the use of AI within your assessments.
We also have a range of support resources, included recorded webinars, on our AI support page.
Stay connected
Share your thoughts in the comments below. If you have any questions, you can email us at OCRHealthandSocialCare@ocr.org.uk, call us on 01223 553998 or post on X (formerly Twitter) us @OCR_Health. You can also sign up to subject updates to keep up-to-date with the latest news, updates and resources.
About the authors
Sarah Ash joined OCR as a subject advisor in 2018. During her time with us she has supported centres with their queries, attended network meetings and contributed to the production of a number of resources. She has also been involved in the redevelopment of Cambridge Nationals in Health and Social Care and Child Development and is currently working as part of the team redeveloping Cambridge Technicals. Before joining OCR Sarah was a teacher of Health and Social Care and a moderator.
Sarah Millington joined OCR after teaching Health and Social Care and Child Development over a period of 16 years. Having been a teacher, subject lead and moderator within her career, she has planned and developed subjects to meet the need of her students to allow them to become independent learners, focusing on effective teaching and learning skills. She has experienced and survived several qualification changes: GCSEs to Cambridge Nationals, and A Levels to Cambridge Technicals. In her spare time she enjoys open water sea swimming, travelling and cooking. Pie and cake are key favourites.
Related blogs