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For instructors considering how ChatGPT might affect their courses, the most relevant piece of ����̽̽’s Code of Academic Integrity (pdf) is that instructors need to clearly and intentionally communicate their expectations to students. Indeed, the Code acknowledges that the implementation of its principles may vary from course to course, and instructors must be clear about what they expect about the use of AI as well as other components of assignment substance and writing processes. Key ways to help students understand your expectations:

• Talk about ChatGPT: ask students what they know, and think with them, as appropriate, about whether and how Chat GPT might affect your course, their work, or the world beyond your course.
• Put ChatGPT in context: connect your views on AI and writing with other expectations about how students can collaborate with or talk to others about a given assignment, and whether and how they should handle and engage data or external sources. 
• Include a clear statement about AI in your syllabus and/or assignments: Illustrative language from ����̽̽’s Center for Student Conduct and other institutions can be found below to help you craft your own. 
• Link your expectations to ����̽̽’s Code: The Center for Student Conduct has helpfully broken down the parts of the Code that are most connected to these issues:
   
  • Plagiarism Standard
    • “All ideas, arguments, and phrases, submitted without attribution to other sources must be the creative product of the student.”
  • Cheating Standard
    •  “Students must adhere to the guidelines provided by their instructors for completing academic work.”
    •  “Students may only use materials approved by their instructor when completing an assignment or exam.”
    •  “Students may not claim as their own work any portion of academic work that was not completed by the student.”

Clearly communicating your expectations around artificial intelligence use in your courses is essential and your syllabus is a great place to start!

At WID, we know there is no "one-size-fits-all" syllabi statement; each of your disciplines and courses have particular goals and needs. ����̽̽'s Academic Integrity policy is clear that each of us has the responsibility to clearly communicate our own policies in the syllabus. Below, you will find illustrative examples of syllabi statements from ����̽̽ (in bold) and other institutions that address a variety of circumstances. This is not an exhaustive list, but we hope it will help you to begin formulating a statement of your own. Feel free to use the language below, or adapt it to fit your needs.

As you read these syllabi statements and begin writing yours, consider: 

• What kind of relationship do you want to have with your students?
• What do you want your students to know about you and your philosophy?
• How can you foster trust?
• How much support from AI is too much?
• Where and how should students disclose their use of AI?

Example Syllabi Statements by Expectation

• When AI Use is Generally Allowed with Attribution
  • When AI is allowed with attribution: Use of AI tools, including ChatGPT, is permitted in this course for students who wish to use them. To adhere to our scholarly values, students must cite any AI-generated material that informed their work (this includes in-text citations and/or use of quotations, and in your reference list). Using an AI tool to generate content without proper attribution qualifies as academic dishonesty. - UMass Amherst Center for Teaching and Learning
     
• When AI is Allowed for Specific Assignments or Tasks
  • Use of ChatGPT (or other similar tools that generate text) is allowed in this class for specific assignments only. When use of the tool is allowed, it will be explicitly noted in the assignment directions. If you utilize ChatGPT for any part of the assignment (from idea generation to text creation to text editing), you must properly cite ChatGPT. Failure to cite ChatGPT is considered a violation of the plagiarism standard of the ����̽̽ Code of Academic Integrity. Violations could result in failure of the assignment or failure of the course and a notation on your transcript. - ����̽̽ Center for Student Conduct
  • Welcome to the wide world of new programs that can “do your writing for you”. Why did I put that into quotes? Because some of the writing is problematic and a lot of it is downright bland. Having said that, I accept that this is yet another way to get around doing your own work, if that is the choice being made. But maybe it can be used for good, and that is where we are right now. In the “what if” and “how to” zone. We might have assignments that use or integrate AI writing this semester. There might be other places where it simply isn't appropriate for the assignment. Perhaps AI can be a helpful tool, and that is part of what we can explore this semester. With that in mind, if you are found to have used AI writing programs in a place where they are not explicitly allowed on an assignment, you will receive a ‘0' grade, be reported for academic dishonesty, and will not have the chance to re-do or replace that assignment. I'd prefer that we see this as a chance to learn and adapt rather than just another way to cheat, so we'll approach it from that angle and see where we end up. I look forward to entering this newish universe with you. - Texas Tech University Teaching, Learning, & Professional Development Center
  • You can choose to use AI tools to help brainstorm assignments or projects or to revise existing work you have written. When you submit your assignment, I expect you to clearly attribute what text was generated by the AI tool (e.g., AI-generated text appears in a different colored font, quoted directly in the text, or use an in-text parenthetical citation). - UMass Amherst Center for Teaching and Learning
     
• When AI Use is Allowed with Prior Permission
  • If you wish to use ChatGPT (or other similar tools that generate text) for any part of a graded assignment (from idea generation to text creation to text editing), you must first ask for permission and explain how you plan to use the tool. In addition, you must properly cite ChatGPT. Failure to cite ChatGPT is considered a violation of the plagiarism standard of the ����̽̽ Code of Academic Integrity. Violations could result in failure of the assignment or failure of the course and a notation on your transcript. - ����̽̽ Center for Student Conduct
  • You may use ChatGPT and other AI assistants for your work in this class but you must contact me for permission first so we can discuss how you plan to use these tools and how you will indicate their use in your work. If you do not first request permission, using such tools will be considered a violation of Penn’s Code of Academic Integrity. - UPenn Center for Teaching and Learning
     
• When AI is Generally Prohibited
  • Use of ChatGPT (or other similar tools or software that generate suggested text) is not allowed in this class for any part of a graded assignment, including generation of ideas, writing of text, or rewriting your own work. Doing so is considered a violation of the cheating and plagiarism standards of the ����̽̽ Code of Academic Integrity. Violations could result in failure of the assignment or failure of the course and a notation on your transcript. - ����̽̽ Center for Student Conduct
  • [This course] assumes that all work submitted by students will be generated by the students themselves, working individually or in groups. Students should not have another person/entity do the writing of any substantive portion of an assignment for them, which includes hiring a person or a company to write assignments and using artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT. - UMass Amherst Center for Teaching and Learning
  • You are not allowed to use ChatGPT (or tools like it) for your work for this class. Using such tools will be considered a violation of Penn’s Code of Academic Integrity and suspected use will be reported to the Center for Community Standards & Accountability. Please contact me if you have any questions about this policy. - UPenn Center for Teaching and Learning
  • Since writing, analytical, and critical thinking skills are part of the learning outcomes of this course, all writing assignments should be prepared by the student. Developing strong competencies in this area will prepare you for a competitive workplace. Therefore, AI-generated submissions are not permitted and will be treated as plagiarism. - Texas Tech University Teaching, Learning, & Professional Development Center
  • If a student has another person/entity do the writing of any substantive portion of an assignment for them, which includes hiring a person or a company to write essays and drafts and/or other assignments, research-based or otherwise, and using artificial intelligence affordances like ChatGPT…” [it is] considered a violation of academic integrity by the Composition Program. - University of California Irvine Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation
  • You are expected to be honest in all academic work, consistent with the academic integrity policy as outlined in the Code of Student Conduct and any additional syllabus language. All work is to be appropriately cited when it is borrowed, directly or indirectly, from another source. Unauthorized and/or unacknowledged collaboration on any work, or the presentation of someone else’s work, is plagiarism. Content generated by an Artificial Intelligence third-party service or site (AI-generated content) without proper attribution or authorization is another form of plagiarism. If you are unsure about whether something may be plagiarism or another form of academic dishonesty, please reach out to me to discuss it as soon as possible. Any allegation of academic dishonesty may be referred to Student Conduct and Community Responsibilities, a unit of the Dean of Students Office, for possible review. If found responsible for academic dishonesty, a grade penalty can also be applied. - Illinois State University Center for Integrated Professional Development
     
• A Student Statement for When AI is Prohibited on a Quiz
  • When prohibited for quiz: “I, _________________, used only my notes and the readings for this open-note quiz. I did not consult other students' notes, the Internet, ChatGPT or any AI chatbot that could generate answers. I don't need to do that!” - Texas Tech University Teaching, Learning, & Professional Development Center

No AI tool is perfect, and there are technological limits to what ChatGPT and similar tools can accomplish. The Center for Student Conduct notes:

• ChatGPT is sometimes inaccurate and will fill in gaps with wrong information. When a prompt is vague or unclear, ChatGPT guesses the user’s meaning, which can lead to incorrect answers.
• The tool was trained on information publicly available through the end of 2021 (for the current GPT3 version). ChatGPT is unable to respond to any prompts referencing events that occurred after 2021—although new versions of ChatGPT (such as the one that has been connected with the search engine Bing) will likely overcome this limitation soon. 
• It is inherently biased due to the data sources used to train it. Sources may be explicitly or implicitly discriminatory and ChatGPT will mirror that information.
• Though OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, has attempted to remove all discriminatory and violent data to prevent harmful output, and it filters responses with its content moderation tool, there are reports of work-arounds and abuses. There are also reports of the exploitation of Kenyan laborers who were hired to remove violent, racist, and discriminatory data sources.
• Unlike search engines or even Wikipedia, it is impossible to know the original sources of data. Information could be from a peer-reviewed journal article, a Reddit post, an outdated textbook, or a poorly researched paper.
• ChatGPT currently is not able to cite sources accurately and may include fake but realistic article titles, journals, authors, and page numbers.

Other privacy issues to note:

• ChatGPT requires a login which necessitates that users provide personal info such as name and email.
• In addition to personal contact information, ChatGPT’s Privacy Policy acknowledges it collects usage data such as IP address, time of use, and type of device, and explicitly states that OpenAI could provide user data to third parties.

Depending on the ways you see Chat GPT intersecting with your course and assignments, you will have decisions to make about changes or additions to your assignments and policies. Let your own basic philosophies guide you. In particular:

• Create clarity around your learning outcomes. For your course, for your assignments, for your assessments, what do you want students to learn? And why is that learning relevant for their lives? Clear outcomes shape the context for your interactions with students, and the more you can help students see why you have the assignments you do, the more you create a learning environment that encourages students’ self-efficacy and metacognition. This reduces incentives to cheat and emphasizes student growth.
• Scaffold your writing assignments with opportunities for students to talk with you and/or each other about their evolving work. When you give students specific directions about how to talk about work in progress, they can take responsibility for managing the work in light of your assignment and course goals. AI can produce text, but it can’t have the metacognitive conversations your students will within your scaffolding. It also can’t create authentic reflections on a student’s process, so assigning reflections will both help your students assess their own progress and communicate your interest in their learning.
• Evaluate how your assignments are specifically connected to your course and/or particular communities. The more your assignments ask students to make connections to specific components of your class, the more they are rooted in a context that only your students are experiencing. We at WID, in collaboration with Center for Student Conduct, suggest a few ways to do this:
  • Design assignments that require students to produce work that is not solely in text format (e.g., presentation, video, podcast, artwork, or visual components). Utilize non-text sources and materials in assignment prompts, as ChatGPT cannot respond to or interpret images or video.
  • Ask students to cite sources, as ChatGPT currently is not able to accurately create sources. However, be prepared to review citations to check for false sources.
  • Incorporate current events (after 2021) into assignments, for which ChatGPT does not have data. Ask students to include their own personal experiences or make a local connection to ����̽̽ or Vermont in their response or ask students to reference specific examples from class.
  • Consider using a platform such as Perusall to have students annotate articles and notes.
  • Incorporate peer review into your assignment cycles.
• Play with ChatGPT to see how it handles prompts in your discipline or course (although remember, in doing so you are helping to train it). You’ll be able to see evaluate some of the patterns you see, which will help you articulate your expectations for students. In general, AI Isn't good at producing accurate, nuanced responses. Your assignment explanations can help students understand the particulars of your expectations.
• Explore different types and uses of AI and see how they fit in with your course and pedagogical practices. ChatGPT is not the only form of AI, nor is all AI strictly generative. The next section of this website includes a list of possible uses of assistive and generative AI writing tools for various tasks.
• Keep your focus positive. Teaching to police errors and wrongdoing simply doesn’t emphasize student growth and learning. You already have experience teaching students about the ethics of your class and your discipline. If you let fears or tech panic about the possibility of AI push you into a position where your responses to students are focused first on the question of whether or not ChatGPT was involved, you will likely find yourself endlessly frustrated by unanswered questions. If you keep your focus on conversations with students that uncover their processes, their evolving questions, and their evolving thoughts, you can guide their growth.
• Don’t expect a technological solution to the challenges of ChatGPT. While AI detectors do exist (Chat GPT’s creators have made one), they are not uniformly reliable—and like other AI tools, will only get better over time. Writing performance is a human activity, and looking to human interactions in your course is the best way to promote learning.

Cheating: It’s Not New (and Not All AI Use Is Cheating) 

• Cheating has been going on since long before ChatGPT. 
  • reports that 75 percent of undergraduate students cheat, although the exact number depends on a variety of factors such as year of surveys, size of institution measured, socioeconomic demographics, etc. more recent research (2020) puts the figure at more than 60 percent of undergraduates admitting to cheating.
• Lang argues that cheating is not a problem with individual students, but it is rather a systemic issue where instructors are unintentionally creating learning environments that induce cheating.
• According to Lang, “The future of cheating also includes the future of technologies to prevent and reduce cheating, which are constantly evolving in response to new cheating techniques, pushing and pulling at one another uncertainly in an awkward waltz” (Lang 226).
• Recently some instructors, such as of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, have directly acknowledged the use of AI programs like ChatGPT into their courses. Mollick says students should “tell me what they use ChatGPT for, tell me what they used as prompts to get it to do what they want, and that's all I'm asking from them. We're in a world where this is happening, but now it's just going to be at an even grander scale.”

How to Structure Learning Environments to Reduce Cheating and Increase Learning 

• Foster intrinsic motivation by allowing students to reflect on their own personal learning as much as possible. 
• Emphasize mastery over performance by allowing students to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways, as opposed to holding everyone to the same standard on the same task. 
• Provide students numerous opportunities to demonstrate the learning they have produced, rather than fewer and higher-pressure assessments intended to measure learning. 
• Instill self-efficacy through metacognition by helping students hold themselves accountable for their own learning. 
• Celebrate students’ production of their original work created for a real, public audience because that is a more authentic learning experience. 

Key Points about ����̽̽’s Academic Dishonesty Policy (updated January 2023) 

• has been recently updated in response to ChatGPT. Now, “Students may not claim as their own work any portion of academic work that was not completed by the student.”&�Բ�����;
• The Code also notes, “Course expectations may vary from instructor to instructor.”&�Բ�����;
• Since students are expected to follow the rules as outlined by their instructors, it is important for faculty to make expectations clear as to whether students may, may not, or are required to use AI for assignments (as well as other expectations regarding academic integrity that are relevant to the course/assignment). 
• For more information, follow up with the ����̽̽ Center for Student Conduct. 

AI writing tools can help with a variety of tasks, such as editing, summarizing, paraphrasing, brainstorming, and task management. These tools vary in how they intersect with human thinking and writing processes. Some AI tools make suggestions (such as Word’s grammar checker)  and may seem so familiar that we don’t even think of them as AI, while others generate novel text (like ChatGPT) in ways that emphasize the technology’s generative power. This page lists a range of AI writing tools, categorized by type, so that instructors and students can evaluate whether and how such tools might fit a particular writing context.  Within an academic course, thesis, or dissertation, the academic integrity policy set up by the instructor may limit the use of AI tools. And in all cases, a writer’s own agency—the ability to frame a writing task and evaluate the evolving success of a text—is key for learning.

Revising

Grammar: There are several AI tools that assist with identifying grammatical errors in a sentence or paragraph.

• Suggestive Grammar Tools: Some tools, such as Grammarly, will not change the text. Instead, these tools will simply identify potential changes, along with the reasoning, and allow the student to make the final decision.
• Generative Grammar Tools: Other tools, such as ChatGPT or Google Bard, can be asked to rewrite text and directly make the changes for the writer. However, it is possible to write a prompt asking it to suggest changes with an explanation of the reasoning behind those changes.

Sentence Structure: AI tools can also help with sentence structure.

• Suggestive Structure Tools: Tools like Hemingway simply identify problematic areas of the writing piece, specifically emphasizing sentence structure. This allows the student to decide if they would like to change the suggested areas.
• Generative Structure Tools: More generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini can assist with this task as well, either by rewriting the submission or suggesting changes if prompted to do so.

Readability: AI tools can be helpful in identifying how readable a text is. For example, some tools can identify unclear and overly complex sentences.

• Suggestive Readability Tools: Tools such as Readable are useful in analyzing and identifying the sentence length and syllables of words within the submitted piece and then identifying how readable the submission is.
• Generative Readability Tools: Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini can be prompted to identify unclear areas and suggest or even make changes to increase readability.

Tone: AI can analyze or adjust your content for tone to better match the needs of the audience (e.g. simple, casual, professional, formal).

• Suggestive Tone Tools: In Word Editor, you can indicate what tone you’d like to use and it will suggest changes in grammar and conciseness accordingly.
• Generative Tone Tools: Gemini can analyze a piece of text and rewrite it according to the tone requested or it can generate its own text and regenerate if you request a different tone. 

Predictive text / alternative sentences: When hit with writer’s block or unsure how to word an idea, students can ask AI to provide some options for the next words to use in a sentence. Some software, like Microsoft Word, have this function already built in. But other AI tools can provide more options for what the student may want to say next. Students can mix and match the results provided to come up with their own version of what the text predicted or supplied.

• Suggestive Alternative Text Tools: Some AI tools, such as Jenni*, work more as a suggestive tool and give potential words or phrases that the student could choose to use next. 
• Generative Alternative Text Tools: Students can mix and match the results provided to come up with their own version of what the text predicted or supplied. Generative AI such as ChatGPT and Google Bard can be used to write whole sentences that can be used for inspiration.

Other tasks

Generating Outlines: AI tools can be helpful in creating outlines of project formats and material or timelines for completion. By submitting prompts multiple times, students can see how different emphasis on various aspects of the project and materials, or materials included or excluded, may look.

• Generative Outline Tools: Generative tools like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Ahref’s outline generator can be prompted with details of the project to create an outline that gives students a plan to follow and a breakdown of potential layouts.

Provide examples of genres or types of writing: When tasked with writing an unfamiliar genre, students could ask AI to provide an example of that genre, explain what the genre is, or even ask how to write that genre. This can be useful when beginning a project unlike anything else a student has done.

• Generative Example Tools: Generative AI like ChatGPT and Google Bard are helpful here, as students can ask questions regarding genre that these tools can then generate answers or examples to without having the AI write it for them.

Brainstorming ideas, headings, titles, or questions to consider: Generative AI can be useful in helping students generate things to consider about their projects, such as headings or titles, or even questions they should consider. They can take key words or phrases regarding their topic and ask AI to tell them about the concept. Students can use these suggestions as inspiration for their own ideas.

• Generative Brainstorming Tools: Students can ask tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard for suggestions and then use these results as inspiration for their own ideas, headings, titles, or further things to consider.

Summarizing, clarifying, or paraphrasing: Long and complicated texts can be hard to understand. AI can help students to paraphrase or simplify a submitted text, allowing them to better understand the core ideas of the text or rewrite it in their own words.

• Suggestive Paraphrasing Tool: Quillbot is a useful tool for students, as they can submit a piece of text and the tool will paraphrase it, allowing students to choose how many synonyms or similar phrases they would like the tool to use, essentially changing the degree to which the text is paraphrased.
• Generative Paraphrasing Tool: ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Scholaracy are tools that can be used to extract the main ideas of a challenging piece of writing or paraphrase it for clearer understanding.