Building a Generative AI Policy and Syllabus Statement

Your Generative AI Policy

If you have some familiarity with generative AI and can see how it may be used by you and your students, your next step is to determine whether and/or how you will incorporate its use in your class. Having a clear policy in your syllabus is essential to protect and empower students and to maintain academic integrity. The ELAC Academic Senate has affirmed that the Policy on Academic Honesty applies to any unauthorized use of generative AI Links to an external site..

At a minimum your policy should:

let students know whether use of generative AI is allowed (and if so, what forms this may take and how its use should be acknowledged)
explain what will occur if unauthorized use of generative AI is detected or suspected (review the ELAC Policy on Academic Honesty) Links to an external site.

A good policy will contain much more, however, including the instructor's reasons for their policy, caution about issues of bias, limitations, and inaccuracy, alerts about student data privacy and security, an outline of how unauthorized use of AI will be handled, and how you as an instructor will or will not use AI in your role.

There is no single statement that will work for everyone...every class is different!

Resources to Get Started

Best Practice

This pdf resource, "How to create a generative AI policy that's right for you", Download How to create a generative AI policy that's right for you", is an excellent and thorough step-by-step guide developed by Packback with sample language to draw from. Working through this is well worth the effort and will set you and your students up for success in using generative AI in an ethical way.
You can watch a recorded workshop on writing an AI policy on our Webinar, Presentation and Workshop Recordings and Slides page.
This is a helpful taxonomy Links to an external site.to get you thinking about how you might allow AI use in your class, ranging from no use to brainstorming, editing and more.

Samples of Syllabus Statements

Syllabus Statement Repository from Many Institutions Links to an external site. (Google Sheets version Links to an external site.)
Sample Statements from Cleveland State University Links to an external site. and from Carnegie Melon University Links to an external site.
Generic policy statements developed by U Mass-Amherst Links to an external site.
- AI is prohibited: [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.
- 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.
- AI is encouraged with certain tasks and with attribution: 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).

Citation Guides

For faculty allowing some use of generative AI, here are some guides for how to cite its use.

Again, your policy is unique to your class and its specific objectives and outcomes. A clear and comprehensive policy will prevent misunderstanding and frustration for you and your students as we navigate these new technologies!