Updating Your Syllabus

Once you have a sense of the learning goals for your class, as well as an idea of what approach you want to take, it's important that you explicitly communicate your expectations for generative AI usage in your course. 

Your syllabus should clearly define when students may and may not use generative tools in your class, as students may assume another course’s policies are the same as yours or may have a different cultural understanding of academic integrity.

You may decide to integrate the use of genAI, allow some use, or discourage it.  The following sections suggest language for each approach.

Language for allowing and limiting the use of generative AI

Integrating the use of genAI requires explaining to students where it can help and or hurt learning.  

Perhaps you want to allow the use of generative AI to brainstorm ideas or to produce first drafts, but you expect the students to make substantial changes to the final product.  Alternatively, you may want to ask students to include the prompts they used or the unedited output they received from the tool of their choice.

Example 1

AI tools can be used thoughtfully or thoughtlessly.  In this course, assignments are designed to minimize thoughtless uses and maximize thoughtful ones. If you do use generative AI, you should use it sparingly and only in generating ideas or early drafts.

Example 2

If you have an idea for a creative use of generative AI for a class assignment, you should discuss your ideas with me before submitting. It might be a perfectly appropriate use of generative AI. When in doubt, just ask.

Example 3

If you include AI-generated content, cite it as you would any other reference material.  Failure to acknowledge that content was AI-generated will be considered a violation of academic integrity.

Example 4

Use of ChatGPT and related tools is allowed in this class, but only in ways noted in each assignment. When you use any of these tools, you must include a note describing how you used them for the assignment.

Example 5

You may use generative AI to prepare assignments in this course if you secure my permission in advance. Unless I give permission to use those tools, I expect you to complete each assignment without assistance from others, including automated tools.  Use of such assistance without explicit permission will be considered a breach of academic integrity.

Language for resisting the use of generative AI

Adopting this strategy will require you to be explicit about the value you expect students to get out of any given assignment and how generative tools interfere with those goals. 

What is your rationale for disallowing use of these tools? The only way to prevent generative tools from being used in your class is to come to a  shared understanding with your students that these tools undermine the goals of the class, and that the students will be ill-served by their use.

Example 1

The use of AI software or apps to write or paraphrase text for your paper constitutes plagiarism, as you did not author these words or ideas.

Example 2

Because writing is a form of thinking, you may not use AI tools as a shortcut to drafting and editing written work in this course. 

Example 3

You may not represent the output of AI as your own work. This would be dishonest and a violation of the NYU Stern Code of Conduct. For instance, if an algorithm constructs an image, a block of code, or a paragraph in response to a prompt, it would be dishonest to turn it in without disclosing that fact.