GenAI Guiding Principles for Faculty and Students
For guidance on using AI tools, ethics, and best practices, please consider enrolling in our Empowering Faculty with AI: Tools, Ethics, and Pedagogy Resource Hub on Blackboard.
A. Individual faculty members should set AI policies for each class or assignment. These may be based on appropriate policies at the university, college, or department level and should distinguish between allowed and disallowed uses of GenAI.
B. AI policies must be regularly reviewed and updated by leadership (Council of Deans and Faculty Senate) to address constantly evolving technologies and educational practices.
C. AI should protect the cognitive dimension of learning: GenAI should enhance, not hinder, teaching and learning. AI is not a substitute for professional judgment or independent thought.
D. Responsibility for content: Students are responsible for all content (ideas, facts, citations), regardless of how their work is generated. (Note: Generative AI such as Chat GPT can generate untrue, biased, inaccurate, and hallucinatory content.) Likewise, faculty are responsible for the integrity of their own scholarly and creative content.
E. Require ethical transparency: Students should be transparent about how they use GenAI and adhere to standards of academic integrity. Faculty should be transparent about how they use GenAI for course design, content, and research.
F. GenAI systems should be regularly evaluated by campus leadership for bias and fairness to ensure that they do not perpetuate discrimination or harm. New findings and guidelines should be disseminated to the community.
G. At all levels, the University should look to adopt and support AI systems that are transparent in how the GenAI systems make decisions.
H. AI tools should be used to enhance positive social change and encourage sustainability and environmental responsibility of GenAI systems.
I. AI should not be used to provide student feedback or grade assignments. Avoid putting sensitive information into AI tools to comply with FERPA.
J. Faculty are discouraged from using AI detector tools, which are not considered accurate enough to prove that students have violated academic integrity policies.
*The full Academic Integrity Policy can be found in the Manual of Academic Policies and Procedures.