Syllabus Language

The revolution in the capabilities and availability of generative AI tools has caused both excitement and consternation in higher education, not always in equal measure. At the Teaching Center, we acknowledge both the potential benefits and the challenges of using generative AI technologies to enhance our academic work, and especially to support our teaching and learning, across the entire Pitt community.

As we explore the applications of generative AI for improving the quality of teaching, we also recognize that it is imperative to uphold the principles of academic integrity and ethical conduct. We understand that all instructors will approach generative AI in their classrooms according to their own levels of knowledge, skill, and comfort with this new technology. We encourage all faculty to make use of this resource page and future AI related workshops and events as you navigate this new terrain.

We also strongly recommend including an AI syllabus statement that will clearly communicate your expectations to your students in all your courses. Below you will find several suggested approaches, and samples of syllabus language, which can be used or modified for your own situations.

Suggested Syllabus Statements Grouped by Permission Level

No Use of Generative AI Permitted

Intellectual integrity is vital to an academic community and for my fair evaluation of your work. All work completed and/or submitted in this course must be your own, completed in accordance with the University’s Guidelines on Academic Integrity. You may not engage in unauthorized collaboration or make use of ChatGPT or any other generative AI applications at any time.

Some Use of Generative AI Permitted Under Some Circumstances or With Explicit Permission

During this class, we may use Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. You will be informed as to when, where, and how these tools are permitted to be used, along with guidance for attribution. Any use outside of this permission constitutes a violation of Pitt’s Guidelines on Academic Integrity [PDF].

Broader Use of Generative AI Permitted/Encouraged Within Specified Guidelines

The use of Generative AI tools, including ChatGPT, is encouraged/permitted in this course for students who wish to use them. You may choose to use AI tools to help brainstorm assignments or projects or to revise existing work you have written. However, to adhere to 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.

Other recommended syllabus statement examples and resources:

• Texas A&M: University Generative AI Syllabus Statement Considerations, CENTER FOR TEACHING EXCELLENCE [ PDF ]
• Course Policies related to ChatGPT and other AI Tools, by Joel Gladd, PhD
• Colorado State University Institute for Learning and Teaching
• The Sentient Syllabus Project, collaboratively curated syllabus language, activities, and resources on AI

Potential Teaching Uses and Examples

The capacity of generative AI–both to streamline teaching tasks and to facilitate learning activities and assessments–is practically boundless. We offer a few examples below:

Use prompt engineering strategies–like specifying length, format, or context or asking a generative AI tool to respond as a specific persona or to address a specific audience–to improve the quality of generative AI output. For example, you could copy/paste an assignment into ChatGPT and ask the AI to act as an undergraduate student in your discipline and identify questions and potential challenges of the assignment.

Generative AI tools sometimes generate content that is incorrect, misleading, or biased. It is important to check and revise AI output as needed.

Uses for AI in Teaching

• Create assignment instructions, grading criteria, or tools like rubrics
• Generate FAQs with explanations for confusing concepts
• Create case studies, scenarios, or examples to respond to or critique in class
• Prepare lesson plans or outlines
• Suggest active-learning activities
• Generate or revise quiz questions
• Create study guides or study games to help students prepare for exams
• Compose comment bank items or sample responses to provide students with assignment feedback
• Respond to student emails about basic questions

Uses for AI in Student Learning

Include a policy on your syllabus that clearly defines when, how, and how much students can use AI in your courses. If you decide to integrate AI into your teaching, definitely teach students about the capabilities, limitations, and best practices for using generative AI tools before they use those tools in class.

• Ask students to complete a written assignment, then use AI to generate a version of the same assignment. Instruct students to compare the two and reflect on their work.
• Instruct students to assign an AI tool a specific persona and roleplay a scenario
• Have students use AI to make a creative work that helps clarify or illustrate a course concept.
• Ask students to fact check and critique AI output.
• Encourage students to treat AI like a study buddy. Students can quiz themselves on course concepts using AI. Language-learning students can practice their language skills by chatting with AI.
• Teach students prompt engineering and ask them to complete authentic tasks that they will perform in their future professions using AI.
• Give students the option of using AI tools to revise their writing or code.
• Encourage students to use AI to brainstorm and refine topic and research question ideas.

Repository of Sample Assignments

Sample Assignments That Integrate Generative AI, Created by Pitt Faculty (must be logged into Canvas to access).

This living collection of sample assignments will continue to grow, evolve, and adapt as instructors innovate and share their discoveries with each other. We would like to see and share (with your permission) the fruits of your thinking. If you would like to submit an assignment to the repository, please email us the assignment, along with the course title and learning objectives. We might share your assignment (with proper attribution) with your colleagues, and we might even feature you in our regular newsletter.

Ethical Use

As a new and rapidly evolving tool that will powerfully affect education and most other social and cultural domains, generative AI presents fundamental concerns about how AI tools can or ought to be used. As those concerns develop and as ways of addressing them emerge and change in turn, we will all need to pivot frequently and reassess how we use those tools and how we encourage or monitor how our students use them.

With the understanding that these principles are not carved in stone, here are our top five considerations for promoting the ethical use of generative AI tools:

• Keep considerations of ethics on your radar. Be mindful of the need for vigilance, particularly in the early stages of this technology. Identify the ethical considerations relevant to your discipline, as well as considerations for integrating AI into teaching and learning.
• Recognize diversity, equity, and inclusion concerns as central to the use and proliferation of AI tools. Consider the accessibility of generative AI tools to all users and how AI, which uses the publicly available data it was trained on, can perpetuate biased, discriminatory, or inaccurate information. How will you help students learn to identify and mitigate these issues with AI output?
• Learn who can use or own the data that AI tools receive as input or produce as output. Large language models store input to use as training data. Explain to students that AI tools store and use their data and avoid inputting student-generated content into AI without their consent. Consider and discuss potential copyright concerns with students. For example: Who owns the product of the AI tool: the user who crafted the initial prompt, the rights-holder of the data that the AI consulted to generate that output, or the owner of the AI tool itself?
• Consider how our uses of generative AI technology will affect the future. Among the many potential implications of the impact of AI on data governance, politics, the media, and the environment, these tools also call upon us to explore what and how we teach students about using AI. How they see us model the role of users, how we restrict and permit their uses of the technology, and how we train them to deploy these tools in their later lives and careers are all questions of significant reach and impact.
• Encourage students to be critical consumers of these technologies. Generative AI tools will extend our reach and grasp for the foreseeable future, and it’s important to encourage students to use AI productively. However, an uncritical use of generative AI tools–one that assumes that AI-generated material is always correct, accurate, fair, and unbiased, for example–can be harmful. Make your students skilled but skeptical consumers of these new tools. Encourage students to validate AI output using other sources.

For additional information, see “Chatbots in Education and Research: A Critical Examination of the Ethical Implication and Solutions” (Kooli, 2023).