Tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Instructors help decide what tools will be used within their courses. Instructors should clearly communicate permitted tools and any restrictions. Clearly communicating expected student use of tools and support helps ensure academic integrity. To ensure that your students’ use of tools aligns with your learning goals, consider updating your academic integrity policy to clarify how students are permitted to engage with the tools and how they should signal that it has been used.

Please refer to the Sample Syllabus for additional guidance that includes an allowed, conditional, and not allowed scenario. To download a copy of this syllabus from Canvas Commons for your course, visit Canvas Commons and search for the key phrase, “Sample Syllabus_DE Handbook” (Author: Liesl Boswell).

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Video Length
1 Hour

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

From the Sample Syllabus:

Option 1: (Allowed)

Students can use advanced automated tools (artificial intelligence or machine learning tools such as ChatGPT or Dall-E) when noted for assignments in this course if it is properly documented and credited. For example, text generated using ChatGPT should include a citation such as: “Chat-GPT. (YYYY, Month DD of query). “Text of your query.” Generated using OpenAI. https://chat.openai.com/Links to an external site.” Material generated using other tools should follow a similar citation convention.

Critical Evaluation: Be aware that the information derived from these AI tools is often inaccurate or incomplete. Students must critically evaluate the output of AI tools, considering potential biases and limitations, and corroborate information obtained from AI tools with other credible sources.

Option 2: (Conditional)

Students are allowed to use generative AI such as ChatGPT, Dall-E 2, CoPilot) on assignments in this course if instructor permission is obtained in advance. Unless given permission to use those tools, each student is expected to complete each assignment without substantive assistance from others, including automated tools.

Option 3: (Not Allowed)

Use of an AI Generator such as ChatGPT, MidJourney, DALL-E, etc. is explicitly prohibited unless otherwise noted by the instructor. Additionally, be aware that the information derived from these tools is often inaccurate or incomplete. It’s imperative that all work submitted should be your own. Any assignment that is found to have been plagiarized or to have used unauthorized AI tools may receive a zero and/or be reported for academic misconduct.

Option: Additional Examples

This Syllabi Policies for gAI ToolsLinks to an external site. resource is a crowd-sourced public document from other educators who have offered to share their policies. This resource contains discipline-specific examples that can be sorted by course and discipline.