Claude for Education

What is Claude for Education?

Claude for Education is a next-generation AI assistant built by Anthropic to be safe, accurate and secure. It provides Northumbria University with ethical and transparent access to AI that ensures data security and copyright compliance.

Claude acts as a 24/7 study partner for students, designed to guide learning and develop critical thinking rather than providing direct answers.

With artificial intelligence rapidly transforming many aspects of our lives, Northumbria’s students will now be provided with free access to many of the tools and skills they will need to succeed in the new global AI-environment.

How can I use Claude for Education?

Claude for Education can be used in many ways to support your studies at Northumbria University.

Claude promotes good academic practice - it is programmed to guide you through the thinking process rather than give you ready-made answers to copy.
Claude asks questions - in Learning Mode Claude will ask questions such as "What do you think about...?" and "How would you approach this?" to strengthen your analytical abilities.
Claude will help encourage you to evaluate information - Claude teaches you to question sources, consider different perspectives, and build stronger arguments.
Your work stays yours - Claude helps you improve your own ideas and writing, ensuring your assignments reflect your understanding and voice.
Claude adapts to different learning approaches - whether you learn best through questions, examples, discovery, or problem solving, Claude adapts to support you.

What Claude for Education won’t do?

Claude is a tool to support your learning and therefore it:

WON'T write your assignments for you - Claude is designed to help you develop your own ideas and improve your own writing. Treat Claude generated content as a starting point requiring you to review and develop.

WON'T provide you with answers to copy - instead, when you use Claude in Learning Mode, you are guided through the process of finding and understanding answers yourself.

WON'T access paywalled academic journals, subscription databases, or other resources provided for you by the University Library. These resources form the evidence base for university-level work, and developing your ability to research and cite these quality sources is a vital skill.

WON'T compromise your learning - the goal is to make you a better, more independent learner, not to create dependency.

WON'T replace human interaction - Claude complements but doesn't replace lectures, seminars, and discussions with staff and peers.

IMPORTANT -

While Claude can answer questions and provide general information, it is essential to understand that:

Claude is not a substitute for mental health support or professional therapy.

Claude WILL NOT record, manage or take action if you make a personal disclosure or request an adjustment.

How do I access Claude for Education?

Claude for Education is managed via a licence request process. You will only be able to request a licence after you are enrolled.

To request a licence, please follow this link to e:Vision and select 'Request a licence' from the menu.

Full instructions for the request process are available on the Student Portal.

Key points when using Claude for Education?

Claude can help with things like checking grammar, helping with structure format, organising ideas, and generating suggestions. However, the main content, analysis, and conclusions in your work must always be your own. Claude should not be used to do the core work for you, unless the assessment guidelines (which will be outlined in your assessment brief) specifically allow it.
It is important to remember that you are responsible for the content of any work you submit. It is very important to check all aspects of your work and be confident in all its aspects and any references to other work.
If you use Claude in your work, you must acknowledge it. This is a key part of academic integrity. You must explain how and where you used AI in your work and reference it where appropriate. There is a link to guidelines later in this article to tell you how to do this.
Claude tools can sometimes generate incorrect information or make up facts, this is known as AI hallucination. It’s your responsibility to use reliable sources to verify all information provided by Claude and ensure any sources or references it suggests are accurate.

To understand our regulations around academic integrity more, you can read the University’s Academic Misconduct Policy.

For quick guidance on how to reference AI tools properly, including declaration examples, visit the University Library’s AI referencing guide.