Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence technology and applications are beginning to have a profound impact on teaching and learning in college classrooms around the world. Prompt-based content generating apps like Dall-E, ChatGPT, and Google Bard can produce visual art, write code, and compose essays within moments of a user request.

We know these new tools have created both anxiety and excitement among our instructors here at CCA. With this in mind, we hope this message offers some clarity and resources to help you navigate the impact of AI tools on your curriculum and student learning.

At the same time, the AI landscape is changing daily, so our policy, training, and response will necessarily be evolving. We look forward to partnering with a broad range of stakeholders as we iterate. In addition to the resources below, we’re inviting faculty and staff to help formulate a series of AI forums to discuss how these tools can shape our pedagogy in positive ways. We are also developing a digital hub where programs from across the college can share articles, resources, and strategies for the classroom.

-Matt Silady

Faculty Liaison for Instructional Technology

-Dominick Tracy

Associate Provost for Educational Effectiveness

Academic integrity

CCA’s Academic Integrity Code was designed to empower faculty to invite students to produce original creative and academic work in their studios and classrooms. Since AI tools fall under the category of study aids, the first item in the Integrity Code addresses their use. Based on the Code, faculty may permit or prohibit the use of AI tools for various purposes throughout the semester.

CCA students are expected to maintain standards of academic integrity. The college defines four types of academic dishonesty:

• Cheating, or the intentional use or attempted use of unauthorized materials, information, or study aids in any academic or studio exercise.
• Fabrication, or the intentional and unauthorized fabrication or invention of any information or citation in any academic or studio exercise.
• Plagiarism, or the intentional or knowing representation of words, images, concepts, or ideas of another as one's own in any academic or studio exercise.
• Facilitating academic dishonesty, or intentionally or knowingly helping or attempting to help another to violate any provision of this code.

If faculty suspect a student has used AI content generating tools without permission or citation, please consult these guidelines and advice for enforcement of the Academic Integrity Code.

Language for syllabi

In addition to directing students to the Academic Integrity Code, this is an example of some language that could be adapted for inclusion in course syllabi, Moodle pages, or course resources to help bring greater clarity around the use of AI-generated content:

While using various digital tools and resources is permitted and encouraged during creative and academic projects, students must properly cite and reference any material generated and/or significantly altered/enhanced by AI and must not present such material as their own original work. There is also an expectation that students acknowledge the ways in which any AI tools have been utilized as part of their creative process. Additionally, some assignments in this course must be completed without the use of AI generated content at any point during the project. If you’re not clear on whether to use or cite AI, please ask me!

Because images or text generated by AI tools such as ChatGPT are not retrievable or searchable, it currently falls into the “personal communication” category for APA citations and MLA’s general AI citation guidelines. Neither of these options seem to fully address concerns expressed by faculty regarding transparency when students have utilized AI applications in their creative process. Therefore, faculty may ask students to submit the full text or images derived from AI tools along with their original drafts and final assignments:

If an authorized AI app was used at any point in the process of completing an assignment, students are required to document their prompt as well as the AI response via printouts or screenshots of AI-generated text and images along with the date on which the results were produced.

Strategies for discouraging plagiarism

We are in the process of updating Portal with resources for discouraging the use of AI tools on certain projects and avoiding the use of AI-generated content as an intentional or unintentional act of plagiarism. In the meantime, here are some suggestions for ways to structure course assignments to encourage adherence to CCA’s Academic Integrity Code.

Furthermore, it may be useful to help students understand the ways in which many AI algorithms are trained by sampling existing copyright-protected works without the permission of the original creators.

AI Tools Faculty Forum & Digital Hub

Many faculty at CCA are already finding opportunities to use AI tools to enhance student learning across the college. These new technologies can provide valuable scaffolding for different kinds of learners. Other faculty are building important curriculum around information literacy and critiquing AI-generated content. This seems like an opportune time to host a series of faculty forums focusing on AI technology and the classroom. If you are interested in presenting your work with AI tools, leading a particular discussion, or contributing resources to our Faculty AI Forum on Moodle, please fill out this quick survey.