Usage Guidelines for AI Generative Tools at CU

The guidelines proposed here reflect the goal to support the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) generative tools in alignment with College Unbound's mission to reinvent the higher education experience for underserved adult learners, using a student-driven model of rigorous and engaged scholarship.

College Unbound is committed to the value and recognition of human thought and recognizing the complexities that such tools as AI generative tools might augment, enhance, and more concerningly, interfere or misrepresent our thought processes in ways still not fully understood.  We wish to encourage and support faculty and students’ free expression while also creating opportunities for them to leverage technological tools that will likely be part of their future experiences. Also, we recognize that these tools–at least currently–come with a range of complications such as concerns about bias, privacy, environmental harm, cultural privileging, and human exploitation that problematize our usage of them. These guidelines aim to provide guidance for students and faculty about the usage of AI generative tools that attempt to balance the aforementioned tensions.

We also want to emphasize transparency and accountability for both faculty and students in their usage of AI generative tools.  This applies both in the legal expectations of those terms as they relate to institutional, local, state and federal laws as well as to the importance of these values in how CU cares for and supports students.  In this way, these guidelines are structured to make it clear when, where, and how the use of AI generative tools are being used to help students and faculty to understand the depth and breadth of usage, which will also further inform subsequent guideline development.

At this document’s center is the goal of helping students and faculty responsibly and transparently indicate the use of AI generative tools and its degree of use in the brainstorming, developing, drafting, and finalizing of content provided by students and faculty.

Definition

AI Generative Tools: We define “AI generative tools” as including (but not necessarily limited to): the use of technologies that rely on machine learning, large language models (LLMs) and other advanced data-manipulation tools to produce distinct answers or outputs based upon prompts by the user.

Usage: Usage of AI generative tools includes engaging with such tools to generate specific content that contributes to the submission of any activity or assignment or work to be evaluated in a course or requisite for graduation (e.g. Big 10, LIPS), including but not limited to papers, presentations, discussion posts, etc, by students or by faculty, including but not limited to learning content, presentations, assessments, feedback, etc.  

Exploring Usage

Students

CU recognizes that this is a new and changing landscape. We strongly advise caution and communication as one looks to explore and use these tools in connection with their learning.  If you are looking to use generative AI in connection with your learning at CU, please consider reaching out to the Director of Faculty Development & Innovation (Lance Eaton), if you have questions or concerns about how you are using it and the policy above. 

Faculty

CU recognizes that this is a new and changing landscape. We strongly advise caution and communication as one looks to explore and use these tools in connection with their teaching. If you are looking to use generative AI in connection with your course, it is recommended to reach out and talk with the Director of Faculty Development & Innovation to double check different assumptions about usage.

Institutional vs Course Policy

Students

Each instructor at College Unbound may have student usage policies that are different in terms of expectation and approach to using AI generative tools. An instructor’s syllabus policy supersedes these guidelines in terms of appropriate usage. In the absence of a specific course policy, these guidelines stand as the default expectation.   

1. The exception to this is that at this time, an instructor cannot require students to create accounts with unaffiliated AI companies or organizations for the purposes of any assignment. 

Faculty

Faculty may develop their own usage expectations within their courses that are different from this document. These expectations should be addressed in the syllabus and clarify the specific expectations. However, faculty will still need adhere to Item #3 in the Faculty Guidelines and follow the process highlighted in the Student Handbook’s policy (Academic Honesty item #6 on pg 107) for students that do not follow expectations.

Requiring AI Accounts

Faculty & Students

Faculty cannot require students to get an account with any AI-generative tools at this time. If looking for possible opportunities or practices for students to use AI-Generative Tools, please contact Lance Eaton, Director of Faculty Development & Innovation. 

Balanced Usage

Students

If students choose to use these tools in some capacity related to their work, the submitted work should be less than 50% generated by the AI tool unless otherwise stipulated by the instructor or assignment guideline.  

Faculty

Faculty should be mindful of using these tools and keep a relational balance between what they ask of students in terms of how much AI-generative content can show up in student work and in their own work.

1. For example, if students are restricted from submitting work that includes more than 25% of AI-generative work in their submissions, then the faculty member’s work should also not include more than 25% AI-generated content. 

Indicating Usage of AI

Students

If students choose to use these tools in some capacity that results in content from the generative AI tool making it into submitted student work, they must make clear and evident what portion of the work is generated by the AI tool and which AI tool they used. 

1. When available, use the appropriate citation format (e.g. MLA or APA) as indicated by the instructor or syllabus.
2. In absence of a particular citation format, students should use quotation marks around the AI generated-text and include a Works Cited that includes both the tool that was used (e.g. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) and the prompts used.  
3. For visual materials or audio materials, consult your instructor on how they would want them particularly documented.  
4. In situations where students use generative AI as part of the brainstorming or organizing process, they are not obligated to cite or reference. 

Faculty

Whenever faculty use generative AI tools to produce anything related to teaching and assessment, faculty must make it evident how much of the content was created by them and how much was generated by the AI-generative tool.

1. For example, for written work, faculty should use the discipline’s preferred citation format (e.g. APA, MLA) to cite AI generated text or some other method to distinguish it such as using boldface, italics, or highlighting the AI generated text and explaining that the text comes from a specific generative AI tool..  
2. For visual materials or audio materials, faculty should include disclaimers about the role of AI-generative tools used to create such material–either as a preamble to the content or embedded within the content.  

Using AI outputs

Students

Students are discouraged from copying entirely the content directly from an AI-generative text tool into their course work.  Students should edit and revise the AI-generative tool’s output, unless there are significant reasons not to (e.g. the instructor’s guidelines say otherwise).

1. Students should use AI tools as a supplement and support to learning, not as a replacement for learning.
2. With regard to LIPS, Big 10s, and other reflective practices, students may use such tools as a resource for insight and further understanding, but their reflective submissions should be still created by the student entirely.

Faculty

Faculty can use AI Generative Tools in the following ways:

1. Learning Materials, Evaluation Materials, & Class Preparation: Faculty can use these tools to help create content for their courses whether it is learning materials, assignment guidelines, slides, conversation questions, activities, etc.
2. Classroom Demonstrations & Learning Activities:  Faculty can use these tools as part of classroom demonstrations and learning activities where the instructor and student can engage with the AI-Generative Tool for discovery and/or critique purposes.
3. Feedback: Faculty can use AI-Generative Tools to create effective feedback for students.  However, they are not allowed to put student-created work into AI-Generative Tools in order to create effective feedback without explicit permission from students. Examples of this balance can include typing one’s notes into a generative AI tool about a student’s work to have it develop a more detailed and tone-neutral or positive response, using generative AI tool to create a rubric for feedback, or using AI to calculate feedback based upon how one scores a rubric.

Using Others’ Work with AI

Students

Students must get documented permission by faculty before putting original faculty content into any AI-generative tool. This might include communications, feedback, learning content, and the like.  

Faculty

Faculty must get documented permission by students before putting original student content into any AI-generative tool.  Failure to do so may be subject to dismissal or other disciplinary actions.  

Accountable Usage

Students

Students are responsible for the possible negative outcomes of using AI-generative tools in the submission of their work as they relate to College Unbound and its community.  These negative outcomes include but may not be limited to:

1. The accuracy of the content of an AI-generative tool.
1. For example, ChatGPT has been known to provide sources that do not exist or links that do not work. Integrating these into one’s work fails to meet the standards of appropriately identifying one’s sources of influence in a given work. 
2. Usage that results in inappropriate harm to the wellbeing of others–individually or collectively.
1. For example, using material from generative AI that results in reinforcing stereotypes (in written, oral, and visual mediums) for assignments or materials related to one’s work at CU.
3. Usage that violates the privacy or security of other individuals.
1. For example, students should not enter names and personal information or writing of other people (students, faculty, staff, etc) to produce an output for any work or activity related to their role at CU.
4. Usage that undermines the academic integrity of assessments, exams, or others evaluations at College Unbound.
1. For example, putting instructor guidelines into a generative AI tool to generate the response, answer, output, etc.  
5. Any other usage that violates CU’s policies.

Faculty

Faculty are responsible for their usage of AI-generative tools for any purpose related to their work at College Unbound and its community and may be subject to disciplinary action.  These negative outcomes include but may not be limited to:

1. The accuracy of the content of an AI-generative tool.
1. For example, ChatGPT has been known to provide sources that do not exist or links that do not work. Integrating these into one’s work fails to meet the standards of appropriately identifying one’s sources of influence in a given work. 
2. Usage that results in inappropriate harm to the wellbeing of others–individually or collectively.
1. For example, using material generated by generative AI that results in reinforcing stereotypes (in written, oral, and visual mediums) for the purposes of teaching and learning.
3. Usage that violates the privacy or security of other individuals.
1. For example, faculty should not create a chat thread on ChatGPT for each student, where they update ChatGPT about how the student is doing and requests feedback/strategies about that student
4. Usage that undermines the academic integrity of assessments, exams, or others evaluations at College Unbound.
1. For example, putting students’ work into a generative AI tool for the purposes of checking for plagiarism or generating feedback (without students’ permission).  
5.  Any other usage that violates CU’s policies.

Policy Violations

Students

Students who do not adhere to these guidelines (or ones specified within a given course syllabus), will be subject to the process highlighted in the Student Handbook’s policy (Academic Honesty item #6 on pg 107).

Faculty

Faculty who do not adhere to these guidelines will be subject to disciplinary review.  

A final note about these policies:  Because this technology is both new and continuing to change, we recognize that these policies cannot and will not cover every situation. Should issues and edge cases arise which fit outside these guidelines, CU representatives will operate from a position of good faith in trying to address each case, which will also be used to help us refine these policies.