AI in Academics

AI in Academics

It may come as no surprise that some students today are taking advantage of the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help them with their assignments. One popular tool is chatGPT, which can write papers and essays, even art, poems, and computer code. It can be challenging to detect the use of this when students submit their work.

In light of this concern, here are some resources to consider.:

Both articles offer practical advice not only for communicating with students about the use of AI, but also actually embracing it and using it to advantage in the classroom. Here some suggestions taken from these articles:

  • Choose a topic and encourage students to use ChatGPT to ask questions, share insights, and collaborate with one another, expanding on the course material and individual knowledge.
  • Instructors can create lesson plans, activities or assignments using ChatGPT.
  • Students can enter information that they know about a topic and use ChatGPT as a tool to organize their thinking around a topic and generate an outline for a paper or project.
  • Identify a question or challenge for students to write a prompt for ChatGPT, have students collaboratively develop criteria for assessing ChatGPT's responses to their question, and then use those criteria to judge the responses, rating them from best to worst.
  • Have students use ChatGPT to write a response to a prompt they have created, and ask students to reflect on ChatGPT's output—is it correct or incorrect and what else might they need to research to verify that?

There are many more suggestions and much greater detail in both of these articles.

Sample Syllabus Entries for the Use of AI

Caveat: Anything generated by AI can be considered to have been plagiarized

Given that anything generated by AI has been culled from the web and restated or recreated without attribution (and sometimes even with false attribution), that content could be considered as to have been plagiarized. Caution is urged with what you allow students to use from generative AI.

Acceptable and unacceptable uses of AI

[This syllabus statement is useful when you are allowing the use of AI tools for certain purposes, but not for others. Adjust this statement to reflect your particular parameters of acceptable use. The following is an example. (Adapted from Temple University's Center for the Advancement of Teaching.)]

The use of generative AI tools is permitted in this course for the following activities:

  • Brainstorming and refining your ideas
  • Fine tuning your research questions
  • Finding information on your topic
  • Drafting an outline to organize your thoughts
  • Checking grammar and style

The use of generative AI tools is not permitted in this course for the following activities:

  • Impersonating you in classroom contexts, such as by using the tool to compose discussion board replies or content that you put into a Teams or Zoom chat
  • Completing group work that your group has assigned to you, unless it is mutually agreed upon that you may utilize the tool
  • Writing a draft of a writing assignment
  • Writing entire sentences, paragraphs, or papers to complete class assignments
For instructors who wish to embrace AI

The use of AI tools, including ChatGPT, is permitted in this course for students who wish to use them. You are responsible for the information you submit based on an AI query (for instance, that it does not violate intellectual property laws, or contain misinformation or unethical content). Your use of AI tools must be properly documented and cited, using quotation marks or other appropriate indicators of quoted material when appropriate, in order to stay within university policies on academic honesty.

For instructors who wish to allow limited use of AI

The use of AI tools, including ChatGPT, is permitted in this course for specific assignments only. When the use of the tool is allowed, it will be explicitly noted in the assignment directions. You are responsible for the information you submit based on an AI query (for instance, that it does not violate intellectual property laws, or contain misinformation or unethical content). Your use of AI tools must be properly documented and cited, using quotation marks or other appropriate indicators of quoted material when appropriate, in order to stay within university policies on academic honesty.

Citing generative AI content for specific referencing styles
For instructors who wish to prohibit the use of AI

The Faculty Resource Center does not recommend this. Our students will likely be expected to use AI in the workplace when they graduate, and we should be teaching them how to use it responsibly and ethically. Also, there are currently no tools that can accurately detect AI writing. In fact, OpenAI recently discontinued its AI writing detector due to a "low rate of accuracy". All of the available tools today generate too many false positives that could lead to false allegations.

For a more holistic approach for discerning acceptable use of AI-generated assignments, contact the FRC for a consultation.

Resources from Boulder