Below are some resources and examples to help you decide on the approach you’d like to take toward generative AI in your classes and writing assignments. You may decide to write a general syllabus AI Policy that directs students to individual assignment policies, or you may prefer to write a policy that applies to all the assignments in your class. Whichever approach you choose, it’s important to make your AI Policy clear and explicit. Note that Elon’s Generative AI Statement indicates that it is faculty choice whether or not to use AI in the classroom, faculty responsibility to make their AI Policies clear, and student responsibility to understand and adhere to their faculty AI Policies and to ask questions when they are unclear or uncertain about them.

What You Might Include in Your Writing Assignment AI Policy

  • If AI is prohibited or required & explain why.
  • Provide examples of acceptable and/or unacceptable use.
  • Acknowledge ethical issues such as data privacy, bias, inaccuracy, intellectual property violations, environmental impact, etc.
  • Note your AI documentation and citation requirements. This might include screenshots, transcripts, documents with “track changes” enabled, or declaration of AI use.
    • At this point, whether or not AI use should be cited in a works cited or a bibliography is up for debate. Some style manuals have written entries for how AIs might be cited in these documents, while other professionals argue that AIs do NOT create content (only pull together pre-existing content), and therefore should not be given author/writer status.
    • Check your professional organizations and talk with disciplinary colleagues to help you decide how you’d like to address this issue.
  • Explain how misuse will be addressed.
  • Encourage students to ask questions if your policy is unclear.

Adapted from: https://danielstanford.substack.com/p/the-best-ai-syllabus-policies-ive

5 Example AI Policies from Elon Professors

#1 – AI Policy for English 1100 (Fall 2024)
AI can both enhance and hinder our capacity to learn, engage, contribute, develop ourselves, and contribute creatively and effectively. It can amplify our learning potential and help us solve complex problems. However, it can also impede our learning and erase our unique human contributions if overused or approached uncritically. We must be intentional and critical about when and how we use AI, but we must also become practiced in its use and aware of it as part of our worlds of learning, ideas, work, and community.

Like Google, Microsoft Office applications, your smart phones, pens, paper, printers, etc., AI should be understood as part of our learning, writing, working, and civic environments. As such, I expect that it will be used, and you should expect that there will be times when you are explicitly prompted to use it in our class.

AI-generated text may be integrated into your writing process to supplement and broaden your own ideas and creativity. That is, AI-assistance should be used as a tool to support and challenge your problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

However, AI-generated text should not be used as the sole source of content for any assignment or any large portion of an assignment. When AI is used to generate text as part of a draft (preliminary or final), that text should be (a) substantively revised by you, the author, (b) actively integrated into a larger text that reflects your own learning, thinking, and contribution, and (c) referenced in an acknowledgement-of-use statement (which we will discuss explicitly in class).

Of course, if you have any questions, you should always feel free to ask me for clarification or help.

#2- AI Policy for English 1100, Dan Burns (Fall 2024)

Use of an AI Generator such as ChatGPT, iA Writer, MidJourney, DALL-E, Wordtune, etc. is explicitly prohibited unless otherwise noted by the instructor.* The information derived from these tools is based on previously published materials. Therefore, using these tools without proper citation constitutes plagiarism. 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.

*Our writing process will occasionally make use of brainstorming activities and reflection exercises that rely on the comparative analysis of discourse conventions across a wide range of audiences. These activities and exercises will invite students to use AI as a guided reading and writing process tool rather than a purely generative device that replaces their own analytical and compositional capabilities. The use of AI Generators is thus limited to these instructor-approved contexts and will be identified as such for the assignments to which they apply.

#3 – AI Policy for a Graduate Level Class (Fall 2024)

Artificial intelligence (AI) language models, such as ChatGPT, are evolving tools with the potential to enhance professional practice, including generating ideas, organizing information, and communicating knowledge. AI, however, cannot replace critical thinking and professional judgment in the work of higher education scholar-practitioners. Accordingly, I have adopted a balanced approach to the integration of AI in this seminar, providing opportunities to explore the application of AI in professional practice while also supporting your development of essential critical thinking, inquiry, and communication competencies.

For each course assignment, I indicate if and/or how you might utilize AI in the completion of assignment tasks. For those assignments where it is permissible to use AI, I provide guidance on the appropriate use of the AI tool. Utilizing AI to complete course assignment tasks not explicitly approved will be considered an Honor Code violation.  If you have questions regarding the appropriate use of AI in this course (and beyond), please don’t hesitate to discuss your ideas or questions with me.

Please note, the use of AI in this course is optional. You are not required or expected to utilize AI to complete any course assignments. If you do utilize AI, please include a note on the assignment cover page which indicates how you utilized the tool. You are responsible for fact checking statements produced by AI language models.

#4 – AI Policy (Spring 2024)

Unless explicitly built into a class component, assignment, activity, discussion, or project, you should not use AI. To use AI when you are not permitted to do so is a violation of the Honor Code and will be reported. AI technologies are writing technologies, and I am interested in studying them and experimenting with how we can integrate them into our writing processes – Also will change how we write in our personal, professional, and civic lives. But AI technologies are quickly changing, and many questions and “guardrails” still need to be figured out. It’s important that we critique the ethical and educational implications, copyright and ownership issues, and affordances and limitations of different AIs. So under specific circumstances, you will be given specific directions about how you may use AI in your class work.

#5 – AI Policy (Fall 2023)

Do not use generative AI for any type of work for this class unless you are explicitly invited to do so. AI is a writing tool that is becoming integrated into many parts of our lives, so I want us to experiment with using it responsibly while actively critiquing its imitations. If you use AI in any way when it is not explicitly allowed and discussed in the assignment handout, it will be considered an Honor Code violation.

AI Policy templates for instructors who want to embrace AI and who want to allow limited usage of AI (from the University of Minnesota)

For instructors who wish to embrace ChatGPT
Artificial intelligence (AI) language models, such as ChatGPT, may be used for any assignment with appropriate citation. Examples of citing AI language models are available at: libguides.umn.edu/chatgpt [or provide an alternative reference appropriate for your class]. You are responsible for fact checking statements composed by AI language models.

For instructors who wish to allow limited usage of ChatGPT
Artificial intelligence (AI) language models, such as ChatGPT, may be used for [assignment types A, B & C] with appropriate citation, but not for [assignment types D, E & F]. If you are in doubt as to whether you are using AI language models appropriately in this course, I encourage you to discuss your situation with me. Examples of citing AI language models are available at: libguides.umn.edu/chatgpt [provide an alternative reference appropriate for your class]. You are responsible for fact checking statements composed by AI language models.

Crowdsourced Syllabus Policies for Generative AI Tools (from Lance Eaton)

This is 146 page crowdsourced document is very long, so you may want to download it and search for keywords, such as the name of your discipline or content terms.

AI Syllabus Statement Heuristic (from Lance Cummings)

This AI heuristic can help you decide if you want to take a humanist, technologist, or post-humanist approach to AI in your teaching.