Can I Use AI? Clarifying Expectations

Submitter: Ryan Watkins, George Washington U

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The experiment:

Given that students often skim over (or skip entirely) the policy statements in my syllabus, I wanted to clearly communicate my expectations for student use of AI (i.e., LLMs such as ChatGPT) for each assignment in my courses. To achieve this I applied the common stoplight symbolism (i.e., green/yellow/red) to communicate when the use of AI was acceptable, questionable, or unacceptable for specific tasks within each assignment of my courses (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Sample stoplight table for an assignment

After initial experimentation, I decided to create a free tool (using Google Forms, Sheets, Docs, Drive, and Sites) so that other instructors could also easily create similar stoplight tables for their assignments. The tool now includes customizable templates for Essay, Literature Review, Research Paper, and Coding/Programming assignments. Instructors complete a simple form, checking boxes for how students can (and cannot) use AI tools for the assignment. The form responses are then transformed into a stoplight table within a Google Doc that the instructor can copy/paste into their syllabus and further edit if desired. The tool deletes the created Google Doc files with the assignment boxes every 24 hours. It is free to use and if anyone wants the code that does the “magic” behind the scenes I am also happy to share it.

Results:

This semester I have included the stoplight tables for each of my assignments in each of my courses. Creating them with the tool was easy – as is creating them without the tool. The tool simply provides initial structure and tasks, that can then be edited and customized for the specifics of the assignment. While several of my assignments do request the use of AI for specific tasks, the use of AI is not required since some students may not be comfortable with using the free tools currently available due to data privacy and security concerns.

Up to this point in the semester, students have not asked questions about the appropriate task-level uses of AI on my assignments – which was my primary goal in creating the boxes. The lack of questions is one indicator, for me, that the additional clarity of expectations is working. I asked students for feedback on the boxes, here is one sample comment “… it gives a clear permission structure and even occasionally invites the use of AI in certain instances (when other courses/educators often just forbid it outright).” And another “I found it helpful and again appreciated the manner [in which] it was color coded and that it was included on each assignment, as a reminder.” One recommendation was to include a link in the yellow light boxes that students could use to submit a form or email requesting to use AI in some creative way.

Relevant resources:

• https://sites.google.com/view/aiassignments
• https://medium.com/@rwatkins_7167/from-ai-to-a-prepare-your-students-for-using-chatgpt-and-other-ai-6ecbfb14297b
• https://medium.com/@rwatkins_7167/updating-your-course-syllabus-for-chatgpt-965f4b57b003

Contact: https://ryanrwatkins.com