Example Syllabus Statements

The following syllabus statement examples were drawn from Dartmouth syllabi and syllabi from other institutions. Syllabus statements from outside Dartmouth are sourced from Lance Eaton's "Syllabi Policies on Generative AI," a document compiled leading up to the start of the 2023-24 academic year. The statements below are organized alphabetically by discipline and identified by faculty name and institution. To have your syllabus statement added to this collection, please share it with us via this form and indicate whether you would prefer to share anonymously.

Anthropology Course

Charis Boke, Dartmouth College

You are expected to develop and maintain a thoughtful relationship with tools of artificial intelligence which can support writing and creating. We will be working directly with AI writing tools several times through the semester, exploring their opportunities and weaknesses for Environmental Justice studies, and citing them appropriately. However, I ask that you do not use AI generators to create work unless specifically requested to. We will learn together. 

 

Art History Course

Mary Coffey, Dartmouth College

Honor Code and AI Writing Supports: Dartmouth College has an Academic Honor Principle that I adhere to. Given the rise of AI writing supports, it is important that each student review the honor principle to be sure they understand it, especially those things that the College says students should "assume." Note statements about Plagiarism and the Misuse of Technology, in particular. 

Writing is thinking, and it requires work and revision. When we allow machines to do our thinking for us, we bypass an important step in the process of formulating and articulating an argument. AI writing supports are tools that may be useful in the writing process. However, currently, AI does a terrible job with art historical writing because it is based on a predictive text model, not close looking. AI cannot see, and where it lacks data, it makes things up based on its biased predictive text algorithms. This means that it cannot write effectively about works of art. 

We will discuss the use of AI in class and work together to establish rules for its use in this class. IF you end up using AI in any way to generate writing, you MUST explain how you used it in a note, and your use must comply with our rules. If I believe you have used it without disclosing your use, or if I believe your use violates our rules, I will call you into my office to discuss your writing. If I determine you have been dishonest, I will file a report with the Committee on Standards indicating that you have violated the college's Academic Honor Principle. The COS will then rule on your case and assign appropriate consequences if necessary.

 

Cultural Studies Course

Sarah Bunin Benor, University of Southern California

ChatGPT and other AI generators that use large language models can be useful for researching and writing papers. However, you should be aware of their limitations:

1. Errors: AI generators make mistakes. Assume the output is incorrect unless you check the claims with reliable sources.
2. Bias: Their output may reflect bias because the data they are trained on may reflect bias or may not include sufficient data from certain groups.
3. Citation: These tools use existing sources without citation. Therefore using their outputs puts you at risk of plagiarism.

With these limitations in mind, you are welcome to use AI generators to brainstorm and refine ideas, find reliable sources, outline, check grammar, refine wording, and format bibliographies. Beyond bibliographies, you are not allowed to copy and paste material generated by AI and use it in your assignments. At the end of your bibliography, add a note indicating which AI tool you used and how you used it, including the prompt(s) you used and the date(s).

 

Engineering Course

Kate Goodman, University of Colorado Denver

Utilizing ChatGPT or other AI tools is becoming more common. While I would prefer you not use these tools and instead commit to the productive struggle that is learning, I recognize that these tools are not going away. Rather than ban them, we will treat them similarly to other resources you use. This means you MUST follow these four points: 

1. Give notice that you used the AI tool, which one you used and how you used it in the comments of your code. 
2. Rigorously test and alter the program to suit the assignment and your understanding. 
3. You must understand any code you submit and be prepared to explain it to me.
4. All comments should be your own words.  Sample code with the appropriate credit statement will be shown in class.

 

English Course

Nirvana Tanoukhi et al., Dartmouth College

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). We are still in the early stages of learning to navigate GenAI technologies, and new tools will continue to become available. With this in mind, the following course policies are provisional and subject to change. 

First, some words of caution. While GenAI has shown remarkable potential as a supplementary tool for brainstorming, thinking, writing, and revising, there are many things it cannot do. There are also real downsides to over-relying on it.

Notably, GenAI works by text prediction. This means that by design, it tends toward unoriginality and even cliché. It also means that GenAI is not beholden to the truth. When a chatbot delivers a response to your prompt, it is telling you something that might sound right, not something that it has vetted for accuracy.

Furthermore, even if a chatbot, working on its own, could produce a perfect, A+ essay for you (it can't), something would be lost in this transaction. At its best, English homework is designed to develop your skills of careful observation, creative and experimental thinking, nuanced analysis, and authentic self-expression. It is designed as an occasion for learning. If you outsource your homework to a chatbot, you will risk diminishing your own learning experience.

Here, then, are our rules:

1. Use of GenAI on written assignments is permitted at your discretion, provided that it is judiciously implemented and reviewed, and properly documented at the time of submission. For any assignment on which you use GenAI, you must turn in a cover letter, including an explanation of your strategy and reasoning for using the technology (one to two paragraphs will suffice), a comprehensive and verbatim list of the prompts you used, and a note on how you checked the accuracy of the output (another paragraph here).
2. You are responsible for what you turn in for assessment, including any inaccuracies or factual errors in the text. 

If you are uncertain about whether a particular application of GenAI complies with our course policies, or if you have questions or concerns that are not anticipated here, please get in touch with me. I welcome your thoughts and will have much to learn from your experiences with this technology as it evolves.

 

First-Year Writing Course

Loretta Notareschi, Regis University

As scholars, we have an obligation to share with our readers the sources and tools we used in creating our scholarship. This is both because it is dishonest to portray other people's ideas as our own and because it is helpful to our audience to put our work in the context of the greater scholarly conversation. Readers may be curious to learn more about our subject; they may want to verify our information; or they may even want to create their own scholarship inspired by ours. In all cases, they will need to know what our sources were. To this end, every paper should have two features indicating our reliance on outside sources:

The first should be in-text parenthetical citation paired with a Works Cited list (in APA or MLA style); or Footnotes/Endnotes and Bibliography (in Chicago Style) with the authors, titles, publishers, dates, and URLs (if appropriate) of each source. This is for sources we have quoted directly (which should be in quotation marks), those we have paraphrased in our own words, and those that we have used for background information. All sources for the text should be properly introduced, with their connection to our own ideas clearly stated. 

The second should be an Artificial Intelligence Disclosure, which should contain the following statements:

"I did not use artificial intelligence in creating this paper" or "I did use artificial intelligence in creating this paper, namely ____________ (ChatGPT, Bard, etc.). I used it in the following ways (check which of the following acceptable uses were utilized):

• Brainstorming help
• Outlining help
• Background information
• Grammar/spelling/punctuation/mechanics help

and I affirm I did not generate text with artificial intelligence and directly copy it into my paper."

Why is it important not to directly copy words from an AI engine into our texts? There are multiple reasons: first, this would be considered plagiarism (which means presenting others' words as if they were our own); second, AI engines are notoriously unreliable on facts—anything they assert must be checked against reliable sources; third, AI engines reproduce biases and prejudices from their source material—it is incumbent on us to check and correct for bias; and finally, using AI to generate text may rob us of the chance to develop our own thinking on a subject. Think about it this way: the point in education is not to generate text artifacts. Rather, the point is to help us develop our own ability to think critically. Writing is a means to critical thinking, and we must do our own writing to cultivate our own true, not artificial, intelligence.

 

Literature Course

Alexa Alice Joubin, George Washington University

Using an AI-content generator such as ChatGPT to complete assignments without proper attribution violates academic integrity. By submitting assignments in this class, you pledge to affirm that they are your own work and you attribute use of any tools and sources. 

Learning to use AI responsibly and ethically is an important skill in today's society. Be aware of the limits of conversational, generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. 

• Quality of your prompts: The quality of its output directly correlates to the quality of your input. Master "prompt engineering" by refining your prompts in order to get good outcomes. 
• Fact-check all of the AI outputs. Assume it is wrong unless you cross-check the claims with reliable sources. The current AI models will confidently reassert factual errors. You will be responsible for any errors or omissions.
• Full disclosure: Like any other tool, the use of AI should be acknowledged. At the end of your assignment, write a short paragraph to explain which AI tool and how you used it, if applicable. Include the prompts you used to get the results. Failure to do so is in violation of academic integrity policies. If you merely use the instructional AI embedded within Packback, no disclosure is needed. That is a pre-authorized tool.

Here are approved uses of AI in this course. You can take advantage of a generative AI to: 

• Fine tune your research questions by using this tool https://labs.packback.co/question/  Enter a draft research question. The tool can help you find related, open-ended questions
• Brainstorm and fine tune your ideas; use AI to draft an outline to clarify your thoughts
• Check grammar, rigor, and style; help you find an expression

 

Life Sciences Course

Franklin Hays, University of Oklahoma

Use of AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Bard, Claude) are encouraged in this course to facilitate the student learning experience and overall productivity. However, such use should follow three clear principles: 1) any and all use should be transparent, properly cited, and otherwise declared in any final work product produced for grading or credit; 2) students are responsible for ensuring accuracy of content produced including references and citations; and 3) students acknowledge that improper attribution or authorization is a form of academic dishonesty and subject to the Academic Misconduct Code as outlined in the Student Handbook and the Faculty Handbook. All work turned into the instructor for grading is assumed to be original unless otherwise identified and cited. If there is uncertainty about any content in regard to the above guidelines, please contact the instructor to discuss these questions prior to turning anything in for grading.