Try Foothill College's Create an AI Policy Chatbot

Consider including clearly-worded guidance about the use of AI tools for your classes. You may decide to prohibit the use of AI or you may choose to build assignments around it, or ask students to indicate their use of AI in an ethical, responsible manner. You may even decide to use AI yourself!

Consider when learners might be encouraged to use AI, and when you might not allow AI usage at all. Leon Furze's AI Assessment Scale is helpful:

Or, if you choose to forbid the use of AI, you might consider stating:

Syllabus Policy Statement on AI Usage

In this course, we ask that you do not rely on ChatGPT or any other AI language models to complete your assignments or projects. This means not using them to generate answers or write papers. Using AI in this way goes against the learning goals of the course and is not in line with academic integrity standards. Let's strive to use our own knowledge and understanding to complete coursework and show our mastery of the material.

Or, perhaps you would like to encourage the use of AI?

Syllabus Policy Statement on AI Usage

Hey students! In this course, we want to explore the amazing possibilities that artificial intelligence (AI) can bring to learning. That's why we encourage you to use AI tools to support and enhance your own ideas and understanding. Here are a few guidelines to follow when using AI in class:

Know What AI Can (and Can't) Do: Make sure you have a basic understanding of what AI is and what it can and can't do. This also includes being aware of any ethical and societal issues that come with AI.
Make It Your Own: Remember, your own ideas and understanding are what's most important. AI should be used to support and enhance your own work, not to replace it.
Use AI the Right Way: Make sure you only use AI for educational purposes and not to cheat or engage in any kind of academic misconduct.
Be Clear: If you use AI in your work, make sure it's clear which parts are generated by AI and which parts are original.
Do the Right Thing: Lastly, use AI in a responsible and ethical manner and follow any laws and regulations that apply.

We want this to be a positive and meaningful experience for everyone, so let's use AI in the best way possible! The teacher may use plagiarism detection software to make sure that all work is original.

Let's get creative and see how AI can enhance our learning!

By the way, both of these policy statements were generated by the ChatGPT AI engine (prompt one: “write a syllabus policy statement forbidding the use of AI” prompt two: "write a syllabus policy statement supporting the use of AI with guidelines").

Joel Gladd's Syllabus AI Policy (College of Western Idaho)

Policies related to ChatGPT and other AI Tools

What you should know about AI platforms

AI writing platforms have become savvy enough to write essays, emails, create apps, rubrics, help with excel, and nearly any conceivable writing situation that relies on linguistic patterns. You should know how to use these platforms. In this class, we’ll practice learning and thinking with them. They will be particularly helpful in the following situations, outlined in AUA’s ChatGPT (AI) in Education guide:

improving equity, since more students can have access to personalized learning, tutoring strategies, and scaffolding;
saving time, e.g., when brainstorming or troubleshooting;
motivating learners when they feel stuck or unsure of how to move forward with a certain task
developing certain critical thinking skills.

But there are certain limitations, as AUA mentions. Students should be aware of the following:

AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, are not 100% accurate. ChatGPT will even make up information that sounds convincing but isn’t real.
ChatGPT is not currently plugged into the internet to access “real-time” information. It has been trained on information that’s current through 2021 but not the present.
AI platforms have bias. They have been trained on datasets that contain worldviews and assumptions and will replicate those ways of thinking about the world. Critical thinking strategies are especially important when engaging with AI-generated text.
AI platforms rely on language patterns to predict what an answer to a prompt should look like. They aren’t “thinking” about the right response in a way a student would.
Apps such as ChatGPT tend to depersonalize your writing. Overreliance may lead to a lack of voice and distinctive style—rhetorical strategies that are crucial for effective writing.

Our Course Principles for using AI

As we learn with AI platforms, there are two principles we use to guide our class policy on AI use:

Cognitive dimension: Working with AI should not reduce your ability to think clearly. We will practice using AI to facilitate—rather than hinder—learning.
Ethical dimension: Students using AI should be transparent about their use and make sure it aligns with academic integrity.

Our Course Policies for using AI

With those principles in mind, here are some policies that will be enforced in our course:

AI Policy I: AI use is encouraged with certain tasks, especially with preparation and editing. Students are invited to use AI platforms to help prepare for assignments and projects, e.g., to help with brainstorming or to see what a completed essay might look like. I also welcome you to use AI tools to help revise and edit your work, e.g., to help identify flaws in reasoning, spot confusing or underdeveloped paragraphs, or to simply fix citations.
AI Policy II: AI use must be tracked and acknowledged. When submitting work, students must clearly identify any writing, text, or media generated by AI. This can be done in a variety of ways, e.g., by highlighting the text in a different-colored font and explaining what parts have been AI-generated in a cover letter. Students can also use the Track Changes option in MS Word to show how they’ve developed a draft from beginning to end. In this course, parts of essays generated by AI should appear in a different-colored font, when feasible, and the relationship between those sections and student contributions should be discussed in cover letters that accompany the essay submission.
AI Policy III: Any writing, media, or other submissions not explicitly identified as AI-generated will be assumed as original to the student. Submitting AI-generated work without identifying it as such will be considered a violation of CWI’s Standards of Conduct, 2.1.1.1: “Submitting the work of another person or entity as your own.” In such violations, students will receive a “0” until they’ve modified it to align with AI Policy II above.

As AI tools become increasingly embedded in existing technologies, students will enter gray areas that don’t obviously align with the policies above. If a student is unsure of whether and how much of a submission has been AI-generated, or whether they are in violation of a certain policy, they should reach out to the instructor and ask for guidance

Suggestions from University of Iowa

When AI is prohibited.

[This course] assumes that work submitted by students—all process work, drafts, low-stakes writing, final versions, and all other submissions—will be generated by the students themselves, working individually or in groups. This means that the following would be considered violations of academic integrity: a student has another person/entity do the writing of any substantive portion of an assignment for them, which includes hiring a person or a company to write essays and drafts and/or other assignments, research-based or otherwise, and using artificial intelligence affordances like ChatGPT. (Excerpted from ChatGPT by University of California: Irvine Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation)

When AI is prohibited.

Since writing, analytical, and critical thinking skills are part of the learning outcomes of this course, all writing assignments should be prepared by the student. Developing strong competencies in this area will prepare you for a competitive workplace. Therefore, AI-generated submissions are not permitted and will be treated as plagiarism. (Sample statement shared by Chrissann Sparks Ruehle, with permission for others to use, on Higher Ed Discussions of AI Writing Facebook Group on 1/6/2023, cited in ChatGPT Resources by Texas Tech University Teaching, Learning & Professional Development Center)

When AI is allowed with attribution.

In all academic work, the ideas and contributions of others must be appropriately acknowledged and work that is presented as original must be, in fact, original. Using an AI-content generator (such as ChatGPT) to complete coursework without proper attribution or authorization is a form of academic dishonesty. If you are unsure about whether something may be plagiarism or academic dishonesty, please contact your instructor to discuss the issue. Faculty, students, and administrative staff all share the responsibility of ensuring the honesty and fairness of the intellectual environment. (Excerpted from Constructing a Syllabus: A Checklist by Washington University in St. Louis Center for Teaching and Learning)

When AI is allowed with attribution.

Use of AI tools, including ChatGPT, is permitted in this course for students who wish to use them. To be consistent with our scholarly values, students must cite any AI-generated material that informed their work and use quotation marks or other appropriate indicators of quoted material when appropriate. Students should indicate how AI tools informed their process and the final product, including how you validated any AI-generated citations, which may be invented by the AI. Assignment guidelines will provide additional guidance as to how these tools might be part of your process for each assessment this semester and how to provide transparency about their use in your work.

When AI use is encouraged with certain tasks.

Students are invited to use AI platforms to help prepare for assignments and projects (e.g., to help with brainstorming or to see what a completed essay might look like). I also welcome you to use AI tools to help revise and edit your work (e.g., to help identify flaws in reasoning, spot confusing or underdeveloped paragraphs, or to simply fix citations). When submitting work, students must clearly identify any writing, text, or media generated by AI. This can be done in a variety of ways. In this course, parts of essays generated by AI should appear in a different colored font, and the relationship between those sections and student contributions should be discussed in cover letters that accompany the essay submission. (Based on Course Policies related to ChatGPT and other AI Tools by Joel Gladd)

Additional Resources

Syllabus Resources from the Sentient Syllabus Project by Boris Steipe, CC BY NC SA 4.0.

📌 Consider co-creating your course policy with your students. Working with students, you can determine allowable uses, and agree on inappropriate use.