By Ava Whelpley

Last fall, a group of first-year students at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) penned a letter to the dean of The Creative School, Natalie Álvarez, outlining their frustrations with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in CSE100: Wicked Problems and Creative Intervention. Now, a year later, they question whether meaningful change has come from it.

The letter, co-written by photography student Zoë Wolfe, who is now in her second year, included 35 signatures and data from a survey she shared with students at The Creative School where they could express their concerns with the course. 

“It is our hope that with this feedback you [the dean] and the administration will seriously re-examine the decision to make these in-development and ethically questionable courses a requirement for students in The Creative School,” the letter, which has been obtained by The Eyeopener, said.

CSE100 is the first course in a series of courses with  the “Creative School Experience” (CSE) name. Owais Lightwala, an assistant professor in The Creative School and instructor of CSE100, describes the course as a “how to change the world course.”

Specifically, he said the course is trying to answer, “what are the superpowers that creatives have that they can lend to these [wicked] problems,” he said. Lightwala describes “wicked problems” as the many large and complicated issues with complex answers facing our world today. 

However, students in the first iterations of this course took issue with use of AI tools, including the integration of an AI tutor chatbot in the Fall 2025 curriculum.

“It was a chatbot that was trained with the course’s content and assignments and you could upload drafts of your work and get feedback on them before you submitted,” Lightwala said. 

In light of student feedback, the tool was not implemented into the Fall 2026 curriculum. 

However, both the Fall 2025 and 2026 curriculums integrated AI “personas” into an assignment in which students were asked to practice interviewing.  

In an emailed statement to The Eye, The Creative School explained their reasoning for keeping the AI persona. “With 600+ students, sending everyone out to interview members of the public would require research ethics approvals that aren’t practical at that scale, so without simulations students would get no interview practice at all.”

In the survey conducted by Wolfe, 40 per cent of students surveyed said they were “learning nothing” when asked how much they feel they are learning in the course. As well, 36.5 per cent said they do not feel valued as students in the course. Wolfe surveyed 52 students who she says are in The Creative School. 

The letter also included anonymous testimonials from students with responses mainly expressing negative feelings towards the integration of AI in the course. One student wrote, “The course is useless to us, and a slap in the face to artists.”

The course was designed by Lightwala in collaboration with journalist and television host Ramona Pringle, who is also an associate professor in RTA School of Media and director of the Transmedia Zone at TMU. The course was first launched in Fall 2025 after several years of development.

CSE100 aims to cultivate cross-program collaboration for students at The Creative School through an assignment called “design jams,” where students practice designing “creative interventions in response to an actual problem,” Lightwala explained. 

The letter that Wolfe addressed to Álvarez questioned whether CSE100 should remain mandatory for certain Creative School students. 

“There was a general feeling amongst my cohort that this was a huge waste of time and actually a detriment to our learning,” said Wolfe. 

Kat Suriano, a second-year photography student, spoke on behalf of her peers as the second-year representative of the Image Arts Course Union (IMACU). 

Suriano said students did not feel motivated because “they felt like their creativity was kind of being stripped away.” 

Suriano also added students felt their work was being treated as a simple “pass-or-fail-type like submission,” making assignments seem like a box to check off, rather than something they wanted to engage with. 

In response to the letter, a focus group was formed by The Creative School to discuss the course. 

“They were trying to get our feedback on how to fix the class. They actually tried to offer me a paid position to work on the class,” said Wolfe. She also said the dean’s office promised participants $25. Wolfe said the payment was never received and the office did not respond to her emails about the matter. 

In The Creative School’s emailed statement, they said some students may not have received compensation due to an “internal processing error.” They added that they, “have already begun reaching out to provide $50 as compensation beginning September 28.”

The integration of AI tools in academia has been a hot topic in higher education for some time. Last week, TMU’s Leadership Task Force on Generative AI published a report, which listed undergraduate programs that have integrated AI competencies in their curriculum. CSE courses were among those listed. 

The report suggests opportunities for generative AI to be implemented into learning and teaching at TMU. Some ways students might engage with AI were also included, stating that “some students may also benefit from and prefer seeking anonymous tutoring support from AI assistants.” 

However, the report stated additional “educational scaffolding,” “clear communication” and “training on academic integrity” are necessary to prevent cognitive offloading—which is when students rely on AI to do thinking and problem-solving for them. 

Lightwala said the course curriculum has since expanded to include a component on AI literacy and ethics. The third learning outcome in the Fall 2026 syllabus, states students should “critically engage with the ethical and sustainability dimensions of creative interventions, including the use of AI tools.”

“I do think it makes sense that if we’re going to introduce an assignment that uses a technology [that] maybe we need to explain the technology as part of the course, so that you know what it is and what it’s not and how to engage with it ethically and responsibly,” he said. 

Paige Connolly, a first-year student in creative industries who is currently enrolled in CSE100, said the course has not covered AI literacy or ethics in class so far. 

However, Connolly said she understands the importance of the addition. “I think that…with AI being so constantly changing…it’s really important to know how to properly and appropriately use it, and how to not abuse the usage of it,” she said. 

She believes though AI can be useful at times, this is reliant on a balanced and measured use of the technology. She said it’s still important for students to practice brainstorming on their own.  

“I think that it’s just very important to remember that we chose to be in a creative program so we need to try to be creative,” Connolly said.