The Ethics of AI in
Higher Education
"AI will have a broad societal impact before anyone expected, and so the development of ethical guidelines must keep pace with its advancement."
– Fei-Fei Li
– Fei-Fei Li
Overview
Northeast Iowa Community College views Artificial Intelligence as a potentially valuable tool for teaching and learning, but there are ethical considerations that must be addressed.
Delineating Ethical and Unethical use of AI in Higher Ed
Browse through the examples below to explore the ethics of staff, faculty, and student use of artificial intelligence in higher education. These examples are merely a guide. Faculty and staff will ultimately determine ethical use in their courses and work.
Students: What might constitute ethical, policy-compliant AI use?
While instructors will need to make the ultimate determination on how learners utilize AI in a course, students may be able to use AI to:
Brainstorm or pre-write ideas for a writing project
Identify or locate new academic sources
Spell-check and suggest alternate phrasing
Review and critique original work
Scaffold an outline
Verify accurate attribution of others’ work
Format citations according to style guidelines
Create a bibliography
Students: What might constitute unethical, policy non-compliant AI use?
While instructors will need to make the ultimate determination on how learners utilize AI in a course, students should generally not be allowed to use AI to:
Claim authorship of AI output on any class assignment
Use AI as a substitute for assigned course materials
Use AI to misrepresent demonstration of learning objective achievement
Faculty: What might constitute ethical, policy-compliant AI use?
Faculty can use AI to:
Calibrate rubric and assignment descriptions
Challenge and redevelop instructional assessments
Strengthen course guide language
Use samples of AI writing for various teaching strategies
Use TurnItIn Originality Check as a method of verifying the authenticity of learner submissions
Faculty: What might constitute unethical, policy non-compliant AI use?
Faculty should reach out to their deans for guidance before using AI to:
Claim authorship of AI output in any course element
Use AI in place of adopted course materials
Use AI as a replacement for instruction
Publish or profiting from academic products incorporating AI output
Run student submissions through AI detectors outside of our institutional platforms
Staff: What might constitute ethical, policy-compliant AI use?
Staff can use AI to:
Identify new sources of information
Spell-check and suggest alternate phrasing
Review and critique college communications
Staff: What might constitute unethical, policy non-compliant AI use?
Staff should reach out to their supervisors for guidance before using AI to:
Encourage students to use AI as a replacement for class learning
Facilitate the evaluation of student work after grading/submission
Publish or profit from academic products incorporating AI output
