AI Syllabus Statements & Course Policy Examples

Students are allowed to use advanced automated tools (artificial intelligence or machine learning tools such as ChatGPT or Dall-E 2) on assignments in this course; no special documentation or citation is required.

Within this class, you are welcome to use AI in a totally unrestricted fashion, for any purpose, at no penalty. However, you should note that all large language models are biased and still have a tendency to make up incorrect facts and fake citations, code generation models have a tendency to produce inaccurate outputs, and image generation models can occasionally come up with highly offensive products. You will be responsible for any inaccurate, biased, offensive, or otherwise unethical content you submit regardless of whether it originally comes from you or a foundation model. If you use an AI tool, its contribution must be acknowledged; you will be penalized for using a AI tool without acknowledgement. Having said all these disclaimers, the use of AI is encouraged, as it may make it possible for you to submit assignments with higher quality, in less time.  Note:  The university's policy on plagiarism still applies to any uncited or improperly cited use of work by other human beings, or submission of work by other human beings as your own.

ChatGPT and other AI generators that use large language models can be useful for researching and writing papers. However, you should be aware of their limitations:

1. Errors: AI generators make mistakes. Assume the output is incorrect unless you check the claims with reliable sources.
2. Bias: Their output may reflect bias because the data they are trained on may reflect bias or may not include sufficient data from certain groups.
3. Citation: These tools use existing sources without citation. Therefore using their outputs puts you at risk of plagiarism.

With these limitations in mind, you are welcome to use AI generators to brainstorm and refine ideas, find reliable sources, outline, check grammar, refine wording, and format bibliographies. Beyond bibliographies, you are not allowed to copy and paste material generated by AI and use it in your assignments. At the end of your bibliography, add a note indicating which AI tool you used and how you used it, including the prompt(s) you used and the date(s).

Provide students prompt(s) to reflect on related to their use of AI after an assignment

• Short & Sweet Example:  Add a note indicating which AI tool you used and how you used it, including the prompt(s) you used and the date(s)
• Learning Focused Example:  1) In what ways did AI help you achieve your learning goals for this assignment/project? What aspects of the learning process were not assisted by AI? Explain why
• Critical Lens Example:  What steps did you take to ensure the ethical use of AI in your work?  How could you improve your use of AI tools in the future?
• Use & Authorship Focused Example:  Write a brief paragraph at the end of your work (1) explaining how and why you used ChatGPT.  Include the prompts you used, and answer this question:  Who is the author of this work?  Then explain your answer.

Other reflection prompts to consider (modified from Charlotte AI Institute for Smarter Learning 2023)

• Are my original ideas present in my work?
• Am I spreading misinformation or perpetuating harmful ideas, biases, etc.?
• How did I use the tool?
• How did it affect my learning?
• How did this assignment (and use of AI tools) help me advance my understanding of the content or learning objectives?
• Have I been transparent about my use of AI tools?
• Have I cited original authors and sources appropriately?
• Have I cited my use of the AI tool appropriately?
• Have I plagiarized (knowingly or unknowingly)?

• I reserve the right, based on my assessment of your assignment with or without AI detection software support, to require you to revise and resubmit all or parts of the assignment if I conclude that you have not used AI appropriately.
• If I suspect that you have used AI inappropriately (e.g. used and not included citation, reflection is sketchy), we will meet in person or virtually to talk about the assignment. This conversation will include knowledge checks for course content.

• There are situations and contexts within this course where you will be asked to use AI tools to explore how they can be used.  Outside of those circumstances, you are discouraged from using AI tools to generate content (text, video, audio, images) that will end up in any student work (assignments, activities, responses, etc) that is part of your evaluation in this course.  When you are unsure, please ask BEFORE using an AI tool.  Any student work submitted using AI tools should clearly indicate what work is the student’s work and what part is generated by the AI.  In such cases, no more than 25% of the student work should be generated by AI.  If any part of this is confusing or uncertain, please reach out to me for a conversation before submitting your work.
• For my class, a responsible use of AI-based tools in completing coursework or assessments must be done in accordance with the following:
  • You must clearly identify the use of AI-based tools in your work. Any work that utilizes AI-based tools must be clearly marked as such, including the specific tool(s) used. For example, if you use ChatGPT-3, you must cite "ChatGPT-3. (YYYY, Month DD of query). "Text of your query." Generated using OpenAI. https://chat.openai.com/"
  • You must be transparent in how you used the AI-based tool, including what work is your original contribution. An AI detector such as GPTZero (https://gptzero.me/) may be used to detect AI-driven work.
  • You must ensure your use of AI-based tools does not violate any copyright or intellectual property laws.
  • You must not use AI-based tools to cheat on assessments.
  • You must not use AI-based tools to plagiarize without citation.

• If you use an AI model, its contribution must be cited and discussed:
  • What was your prompt?
  • Did you revise the AI model’s original output for your submission?
  • Did you ask follow-up questions?
  • What did you learn?
• If you choose to use ChatGPT in this class, you MUST do the following:
  • Cite ChatGPT (see this resource for more information on how to do this).
  • Write a brief paragraph at the end of your work (1) explaining how and why you used ChatGPT.  Include the prompts you used, and answer this question:  Who is the author of this work?  Then explain your answer.  I reserve the right based on my assessment of your assignment to require you to revise and resubmit all or parts of the assignment if I conclude that you have not used ChatGPT appropriately.
• If I suspect that you have used ChatGPT inappropriately (e.g. used and not included citation, reflection is sketchy), we will meet in person or virtually to talk about the assignment. This conversation will include knowledge checks for course content.

• [from KSU Writing Program Director, Jennifer M. Cunningham, Associate Professor of English] In this class, unacceptable uses of artificial intelligence (AI) assistance will be treated the same as plagiarism and/or an academic dishonesty violation.
  • Examples of acceptable AI use or assistance include: 
    • Brainstorming a topic
    • Generating search terms or keywords for research
    • Formatting citations (keep in mind that while AI can format citations, it often includes incorrect quotations and citations within a text)
    • Finding errors and receiving general suggestions for improving without using AI tools to explicitly compose an essay or text
    • Searching for specific information as one would do with search engines, browsers, and databases
    • Generating AI artwork, audio, images, or videos with proper credits to the AI tool used
  • Examples of unacceptable AI use or assistance include:
    • Using AI to write entire essays or complete unfinished portions of an assignment, unless the use of AI is a part of the assignment
    • Using AI to rewrite significant portions of a text
    • Improperly crediting AI tools for any artistic piece used for illustrative purposes
• In this class, I encourage students to use ChatGPT for the following types of tasks:
  • Outlining content
  • Providing background knowledge (with the understanding that ChatGPT is often wrong—Wikipedia is a better resource for this right now)
  • Checking grammar and syntax.
• AI Use for Essays and Discussion Board Entries:
  • Appropriate use of AI when writing essays or discussion board entries 
    • You are free to use spell check, grammar check, and synonym identification tools (e.g., Grammarly, and MS Word)
    • You are free to use app recommendations when it comes to rephrasing sentences or reorganizing paragraphs you have drafted yourself 
    • You are free to use app recommendations when it comes to tweaking outlines you have drafted yourself
  • Inappropriate use of AI when writing essays or discussion board entries
    • You may not use entire sentences or paragraphs suggested by an app without providing quotation marks and a citation, just as you would to any other source. Citations should take this form: OpenAI, chatGPT. Response to prompt: “Explain what is meant by the term  ‘Triple Bottom Line’” (February 15, 2023, https://chat.openai.com/).
    • You may not have an app write a draft (either rough or final) of an assignment for you

• I expect you to use AI (e.g., ChatGPT, Dall-e-2) in this class.  In fact, some assignments will require it. Learning to use AI is an emerging skill, and I will provide basic tutorials about how to leverage it for our work. However, be aware of the limits of these software systems.
  • AI is vulnerable to discrimination because it can inadvertently (or intentionally) perpetuate existing biases present in the data it is trained on. For example, if an AI system is trained on data that contains a bias against a certain group of people, the system may make decisions that are unfair or discriminatory towards that group.  There are several reasons why AI systems can perpetuate discrimination:
    • Bias in the training data: If the training data contains biases, the AI system may learn and replicate those biases in its decision-making.
    • Lack of diversity in the training data: If the training data does not include a diverse range of examples, the AI system may not perform well on diverse inputs, which may lead to discrimination.
    • Lack of transparency: Some AI systems can be difficult to understand and interpret, making it challenging to detect and correct for biases.
    • Lack of accountability: Without proper oversight and accountability, it can be difficult to identify and address discrimination in AI systems.
    • It is important to keep in mind that these biases can be unconscious, unintended and hard to detect, but they can have serious consequences if they are not addressed.
• AI can be a valuable tool for augmenting human decision-making and critical thinking, but it is not a replacement.  AI is a tool, just like a pencil or a computer. However, unlike most tools you need to acknowledge using it.
  • Pay close attention to whatever information you use in your own work that is produced from AI, and explain how/what you used at the end of assignments.
  • My recommendation is to screen shot and save everything (i.e., what prompts you used, what answers were produced, where, why, and how). This is new territory, but basic attribution rules still apply. Cite everything, otherwise you are likely violating academic integrity policies.  
  • If you provide minimum effort prompts, you will get low quality results. You will need to refine your prompts to get better outcomes. This will take time and practice.
  • Don't trust anything the systems says. Assume it is wrong, unless you already know the answer and can verify with trusted sources. It works best for topics you deeply understand.
  • Use your best judgment to determine if/where/when to use these tools. They don't always make products easier and/or better

Provide students prompt(s) to reflect on related to their use of AI after an assignment

• Short & Sweet Example:  Add a note indicating which AI tool you used and how you used it, including the prompt(s) you used and the date(s)
• Learning Focused Example:  1) In what ways did AI help you achieve your learning goals for this assignment/project? What aspects of the learning process were not assisted by AI? Explain why
• Critical Lens Example:  What steps did you take to ensure the ethical use of AI in your work?  How could you improve your use of AI tools in the future?
• Use & Authorship Focused Example:  Write a brief paragraph at the end of your work (1) explaining how and why you used ChatGPT.  Include the prompts you used, and answer this question:  Who is the author of this work?  Then explain your answer.

Other reflection prompts to consider (modified from Charlotte AI Institute for Smarter Learning 2023)

• Are my original ideas present in my work?
• Am I spreading misinformation or perpetuating harmful ideas, biases, etc.?
• How did I use the tool?
• How did it affect my learning?
• How did this assignment (and use of AI tools) help me advance my understanding of the content or learning objectives?
• Have I been transparent about my use of AI tools?
• Have I cited original authors and sources appropriately?
• Have I cited my use of the AI tool appropriately?
• Have I plagiarized (knowingly or unknowingly)?

• Your thoughts, opinions and personal experiences are integral to the learning process. As such, the use of generative AI is prohibited in this class. Other instructors may permit the use of this tool in their courses; however, we are asking students to engage in self-reflection that is both authentic to them and is expressed in an authentic manner.  We will not be judging grammar or written communication skills, although we may return assignments for resubmission if they do not initially meet requirements. Any student who is believed to have engaged in any form of academic dishonesty will be held accountable to the guidelines stated in the university’s policy on student cheating and plagiarism (3342-3-01.8 in the policy register)...

NOTE:  Please know that AI Detection software are not proof of cheating.  They are tools but are also AI - biased and inaccurate*.  We recommend if you use them, make sure your students know you are using AI Detectors (as you are inputting their work into AI), use with caution, and that it is a start of conversation with students.  

*Here are some references about AI Detection Software

• Peer reviewed article on AI detector accuracies:  (https://edintegrity.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s40979-023-00140-5)
• Inside Higher Ed about AI detectors:  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/artificial-intelligence/2024/02/09/professors-proceed-caution-using-ai  
• Research referenced in articles regarding AI detector bias:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666389923001307
• As the GenAI models continue to learn from use, it will likely get harder for detectors to detect output as well (https://edintegrity.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s40979-023-00140-5).