With artificial intelligence (AI) tools becoming increasingly accessible and sophisticated, it’s important to help students consider and document their interactions with this technology. If you permit AI use in your course, the approaches below can be adapted for your course to help students clearly disclose their AI use related to course work or assignments; develop critical literacy around AI; and help you understand how AI impacts student learning. These include a sample AI policy rationale and responsible AI-use statement, and guidelines for a variety of ways that students can attribute their AI use in your course.

AI Policy Rationale & Responsible AI Use Statement

When setting your AI policy for your course, it’s important to transparently communicate your policy rationale and expectations for responsible AI use. For example, you can explain why you are asking students to provide specific information (e.g., a traditional citation, a reflection statement, etc.) and how you will use that information to evaluate their learning. You can also provide some guidance on what critical and responsible AI use looks like in your course.

Here’s an example of a rationale for an AI policy that you could include in your syllabus: 

Here’s an example of a responsible AI-use statement:

In addition, instructors are encouraged to use Cornell's AI course policy icons to clearly signal their expectations of allowed and disallowed uses of AI in their course. Because students will encounter a range of policies in various classes across the university, using these icons can help with the important task of clearly communicating the specific AI policy for your course, while also encouraging students to ask clarifying questions that ensure they are meeting your course expectations.

Using AI with Attribution

If you permit students to use AI in your course but expect them to attribute their use (‘use with attribution’), be sure to provide students with guidelines for how you expect them to document their use of AI tools. The following guidelines can work separately or in combination with each other to support your teaching and student learning. For example, you might ask students both to reflect on their AI usage and also provide a full transcript of all their interactions with AI, as described further below.

At the simplest level, students can use a traditional reference to explicitly acknowledge content generated from AI. However, please note that current versions of discipline-specific style guides only suggest very basic citations; therefore, depending on the assignment and learning goals, you may want to have students supplement traditional references with more specific documentation of their AI use.

Traditional Reference

For papers/written documents, treat exact or modified AI-generated text (or output) as reference materials, by citing it appropriately using quotation marks, in-text citations, and references according to the standards of your discipline. The APA style guide, MLA style guide, and Chicago Manual of Style include recommendations and examples for citing LLM-generated materials.

Here’s an example of APA-style citation for AI-generated text/output:

An Explanatory Statement

If you want students to show you how they used AI to complete assignments, without requiring a full record of their interactions with AI, you can request an explanatory statement where they specify the tools they used, how they used it, and where they used it. This statement can also be requested informally in small group settings or discussions, to help set classroom norms about responsible AI use.

Here’s a sample structure for an explanatory statement, with accompanying question prompts:

• Instructions: For assignments and projects, document how you used AI in a paragraph/appendix as transparently as possible, explaining:  
  • AI tool(s) used:
    • Include the date, model/version used
    • Example: “Chat-GPT-3. (YYYY, Month DD of query). 'Text of your query.' Generated using OpenAI. https://chat.openai.com/"
  • How did you use AI? (e.g., to generate ideas, turns of phrase, elements of text, long stretches of text, lines of argument, pieces of evidence, maps of conceptual territory, illustrations of key concepts, programming codes, etc.)
  • Where in this assignment did you use AI?
  • Describe the prompt(s)/parameter(s)/or preferences(s) you used to get results.
  • How did you verify the information? (How did you confirm or challenge the results?)

A Reflection Statement

If you want your students to reflect on how they are engaging critically with AI tools, you can ask them to consider and then describe their AI tool usage and habits, and set intentions for future assignments, courses, and projects. A reflection statement can also be requested informally in small group settings or discussions to help set classroom norms about responsible AI use.

Here’s a sample structure for a reflection  statement, with accompanying question prompts:

• Instructions: For assignments and projects, document your AI use in a paragraph/appendix as transparently as possible, explaining:   
  • Why did you use these tools? (e.g., to save time, to surmount writer’s block, to stimulate thinking, to handle mounting stress, to clarify prose, to translate text, to experiment for fun, etc.)
  • How did you use them? (e.g., to generate ideas, turns of phrase, elements of text, long stretches of text, lines of argument, pieces of evidence, maps of conceptual territory, illustrations of key concepts, programming codes, etc.)
  • How did you verify the information? (How did you confirm or challenge the results?)
  • What other (course) resources did you try before (or in addition to) using AI?
  • Will you use this tool again in the future? Were you satisfied with the results? Did the tool successfully address the scope of the assignment?

An Extended or Full Transcript 

If you want students to provide a detailed record of how they used AI tools over the course of a project/deliverable, you can ask for an extended project workflow or full transcripts of their interaction with AI. This approach can be helpful in project contexts where it is important for you to follow along with the student’s work and decision-making process. It might also be helpful for students to document and report on their project.

Here’s a sample structure requesting an extended or full transcript:

• Instructions: For assignments and projects, document AI use in a paragraph/appendix as transparently as possible, explaining:
  • The prompt(s)/parameter(s)/ or preferences(s) you fed to the platform or tool to get results.
  • The entire exchange (e.g., screenshots, copied texts, etc.), highlighting the relevant sections.
  • Document this process using a flowchart, for extensive AI use (e.g., in images, videos, and design project parts) to show the chain of command and prompts (to evaluate your technical skills in creating assets with AI).

Data Privacy and Legal Considerations

We encourage you to remind students to avoid uploading sensitive personal information, confidential data (e.g., experimental results, unpublished research articles, etc.), and non-public information into generative AI tools. In addition, uploading any copyrighted materials into AI tools to generate derivative content, without permission, might violate intellectual property and copyrights law. Note that students may need additional guidance regarding what intellectual property and copyright law mean in the context of AI-generated content and tools (e.g., what constitutes “fair use,” how much course content can be shared or uploaded into an AI tool, and how AI-generated content may violate intellectual property or copyright laws), as well as what violation of these laws might look like. More information on these topics can be found AI Tools and Resources: Copyright and Generative AI. Where these or any other sensitive materials are implicated, students should be encouraged to use campus-approved tools and instances, which are ephemeral and do not feed materials back into ongoing model training; more information on these tools can be found at Cornell’s Generative AI Services.

Additional Resources

• Syllabi Policies for AI Generated Tools (Open-source)
• Class Policies for AI Use (Northern Illinois University)
• University of North America Student AI Policy (University of North America)
• Can Using Generative AI Infringe on Copyrighted Works? (University of South Florida)