AI Statements for Course Syllabi

“You are welcome to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools and applications (such as Copilot, DALL-E, etc.) in this class as they support the learning objectives of this course. Please be aware you are responsible for the information you submit based on an AI query (i.e. ensure your professor has allowed you to publicly post course content such as assignment or assessment prompts and that the AI generated results do not contain misinformation or unethical content). Your use of AI tools must be documented and cited to conform to this course’s expectations.”

If using this option, it is important to explain the steps students should follow – for example, how to cite work and whether students should turn in, or at least retain, chat transcripts. Encourage students to contact you with questions or concerns.

“We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools and applications (such as Copilot, DALL-E, etc.) in some circumstances in this course as they support the course learning objectives. The specifics of when, where and how these tools are permitted will be included with each assignment, along with guidance for attribution. Any use of these tools other than where indicated is a violation of this course’s expectations and will be addressed through UW–Madison’s academic misconduct policy, specifically UWS 14.03(1)(b) Uses unauthorized materials or fabricated data in any academic exercise.”

If using this option, it is important to explain the steps students should follow – for example, how to cite work and whether students should turn in, or at least retain, chat transcripts. Encourage students to contact you with questions or concerns.

“The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and applications (including, but not limited to, Copilot, DALL-E, and others) for course assignments and assessments does not support the learning objectives of this course and is prohibited. Using them in any way for this course is a violation of the course’s expectations and will be addressed through UW–Madison’s academic misconduct policy, specifically UWS 14.03(1)(b) Uses unauthorized materials or fabricated data in any academic exercise.”

If using this option, it is important to explain to students why AI is prohibited in the context of what they are learning, or are expected to learn, in the course.

Generative AI: My View in the Context of Education

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, has become “disruptors” in the world. There are advantages and disadvantages to using GenAI. When you use a bot to do your writing, prepare your slides, or think for you, you aren’t providing your own original ideas. Your ideas are important! Using GenAI could also be detrimental to your learning, making tasks and assignments in more advanced classes, internships, or future jobs, more difficult. Building your thinking and problem-solving skills is important!

AI-generated text often sounds impressive at first glance. However, upon critical review, you may find sentences, passages, or entire paragraphs made up of smooth-sounding, elaborate words strung together that don’t reflect your actual ideas. Writing is cognitively valuable and going to the gym is healthy for your body. If you have someone else do pushups for you, you will not get muscles. If you want muscles, you need to do pushups yourself. The same goes for writing and thinking. Practicing any skill that you want to get better at is important and developing your own ideas is part of building your skill set. Think, write, discuss, share, and work your muscles!

This said, there are productive ways to use GenAI. For example, to help with brainstorming or editing (but not writing for you). GenAI is useful for tasks that you already know how to do (and you want to do them quickly) or for tasks that don’t require thinking power from you. Some people use GenAI to find references for papers (but these can be inaccurate or may not exist). The list is long. My point is that there are good uses of GenAI. Regardless, you are here to learn, grow, and think! My job is to help you do that. Therefore, I expect you to conduct your own research, and to formulate, organize, and ultimately do your own unique work and present your own ideas. The skill and art of writing requires a process that ultimately contributes to deeper thinking and understanding. I know that writing well is hard and takes practice. There are resources to help you with this, such as The Writing Center, as well as strategies that others have found useful.

AI Guidelines for This Course[1]

Required: Be Transparent

• Please request permission to submit syllabus prompts into any GenAI tool. I may say yes, but please ask by sending a short email with pertinent details.
• Follow these instructions for citing GenAI; use the APA Style instructions.
• Describe how you used GenAI (e.g., editing, grammar, idea generation, citations/references) and provide the prompt you used. Include this in a footnote, an appendix, or other appropriate place depending on the assignment.
• If you paraphrase or quote from GenAI (e.g., it summarized information that you used or wrote something for you that is included in your assignment), please cite it like other sources of information including the tool used and version (e.g., ChatGPT-4). This should be included in your reference list.

Recommended: Become AI Literate

• Review this UW-Madison research guide: https://researchguides.library.wisc.edu/GenerativeAI/Home and this student guidance from the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards.
• Familiarize yourself with the UW-Madison GenAI-contracted tools that are freely available to students and that provide higher data security and privacy protection than other tools.

AI and Academic Misconduct

•  I will not use AI detection tools due to their unreliability and risk of false accusations.
•  If you use GenAI and cite it as a source or describe the process you used to engage with it (per the guidelines above), you are still fully responsible for the content you submit including but not limited to: text that is plagiarized, sources that do not exist, inaccuracies, bias, and so on. A responsibility that comes with using GenAI is to vet everything it generates and that you use in this course.
•  If GenAI appears to be negatively affecting your learning, writing, or any assignment by making what you submit or say inaccurate, too boilerplate, overly vague, or I have questions about plagiarism, I will ask to meet with you. We might talk about how you have used it, how you might use it differently, and what other resources and strategies you could try.
•  If I believe you are using GenAI and not following the requirements listed above, it will be considered a violation of course policy and addressed through UW–Madison’s academic misconduct policy subject to disciplinary action, specifically: UWS 14.03(1)(b) Uses unauthorized materials or fabricated data in any academic exercise.

About This Syllabus

This document was edited for grammar and clarity using Google Gemini 2.5 Pro. All substantive content, including course structure, evaluative methods, and academic expectations remain the exclusive work and responsibility of the instructor.

[1] These AI Guidelines apply only to this course. They do not apply to other courses unless the instructor happens to use the same guidelines. It can be helpful to find out what AI guidelines apply to each of your courses, especially if they are not explicitly written in the course syllabus. Guidelines are likely to vary from class to class and may change over time; we are in unprecedented space marked by uncertainty and rapid change because of this major technological shift.

Generative AI has arrived and is a rapidly evolving tool that is being used worldwide.  The potential to reduce your workload and discover new sources is unlimited, but so is the potential for reading misinformation and unverified (phony) data.  In this course, you are welcome to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools and applications (such as Copilot, ChatGPT, etc.) to find information and other sources.  Microsoft Copilot is an AI tool available to all UW-Madison students that offers commercial data protection.  Never enter sensitive or restricted data into any AI model chatbot.

All information obtained from an AI query must be supported by traditional and verifiable sources.  You are responsible for all information you submit in papers, discussions, or presentations and citations are required.  The use of AI does not mean you can simply “cut and paste” results (that is called plagiarism.)  Instead, you can use the AI tool as a “search engine” and must backup all findings with cited traditional and verifiable sources.  Thus, it will be unlikely that you’ll need to cite AI output since you’ll be referencing other verifiable sources with in-text citations tied to a reference list.

All students are required to commit to the following statement: “I know that in this course I can use ChatGPT (and other AI models), but I must always apply critical thinking to anything ChatGPT (or other AI models) tell me AND I must always make a Gradebook Comment (not a Discussion Board post, but a Gradebook Comment) telling the instructor and TAs whenever I have used ChatGPT (or other AI models) and how I have used them.

The strategic and limited use of generative artificial intelligence (Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, etc.) in this course is allowed at the discretion of the instructor and should be used with the intent to enhance learning experiences. However, the use of AI raises important ethical considerations that must be addressed in order to ensure that it is used in a fair, responsible, and effective manner. Knowing this, learners should be transparent about their use of AI in this course, footnote or cite AI when it is used in course materials, be aware of potential biases provided and/or incorrect responses, ensure the privacy and security of data, and continuously evaluate its effectiveness. Currently employed engineers and other working professionals should follow any policies their companies may have that prohibit providing AI with company-specific information (business plans, trade secrets, sensitive or restricted data, etc.). Additionally, AI is to be used as a supplemental resource only and should not replace your independent research, your own creative synthesis of ideas from the course, and most importantly, your own critical thinking.

A strategic and limited use of AI would be to use it not to write your homework but rather to help after you have done your own thinking and drafting — to identify grammar problems and enhance the clarity of key passages within your written work.  But even then, understand that these tools can be misleading at times, and sometimes it can be helpful to use more than one tool to help with grammar, punctuation, style, and clarity.

The assignments in this class are designed so that students must be in the class, understanding and asking questions, then synthesizing what has been learned to write a successful response to the assignments.  So – you may use AI to help clarify your own good ideas, when that seems helpful, but remember that students are ultimately responsible for whatever work they turn in under their name, so please review any help provided by an AI and ensure that it is not distorting your meaning or your message.

Generative AI technologies will impact many aspects of the engineering workplace, including the way we craft communications. As a result, this course explores the potential for AI to refine your speaking, writing, and listening skills to better meet on-the-job challenges and strengthen your professional contributions to contemporary society. It will also explore the pitfalls of AI technology as it currently exists.

Since this course explicitly engages with generative AI platforms, there are no restrictions on the use of AI for any assignment. However, note that I do not require the use of these platforms for any graded assignment aside from the AI demos/workshops. Whatever your preference, we will explore these platforms together during class time to achieve the core learning objective of developing your capacity to effectively and responsibly use AI writing platforms.

Here are some guiding principles to keep in mind when pursuing this objective:

• Transparency builds credibility; always make sure readers know where you are getting your information from and how you are producing your content.
• Authorship entails responsibility; as an author, you are ultimately responsible for the accuracy of the information in your writing.
• AI requires human judgment; you will need to sharpen and use your own judgment on the proper times and places to use AI writing in general, the proper times and places to use AI writing in the writing process itself, and the best forms of prompting based on foundational rhetorical considerations of audience, purpose, context, and so on.
• AI raises the bar for quality communications; to elevate AI content beyond its “house style” to the level of superior writing, you will need to make significant interventions in your prompts and/or in your revisions to AI output to accommodate the nuances of argumentation, localization, and audience that distinguish good writing and speaking.

If I sense that AI platforms have negatively affecting your writing – by making it too boilerplate, for example, or by hallucinating sources – we will have a conversation about how you have used these platforms and how you might use them better in the future. And if you have questions about whether a particular use of generative writing is acceptable, bring the question to me!

You may use generative AI tools (e.g., Gemini, Copilot, Grammarly, etc.) in this class unless otherwise specified, as long as it is done transparently and in ways that enhance rather than outsource your learning. Specifics vary based on learning goal.  If you’re not sure, please ask.

Transparency Requirements

Clearly state AI use OR non-use on all assignments.  If you used AI, include a description of what you used (e.g., Gemini 2.5 Flash), how (e.g., for feedback on your organization), and a brief note for why this was a strategy that was good for learning (often including fact-checking).  Reflection on if and how it was helpful is always welcome.  A shared link to your chat can be an efficient way to meet most of the citation requirements.

Similarly, I will note any times that I use AI on your work.  I will never use it for grading or to generate feedback.  I will never input it into a tool that trains on inputs (unless I receive prior permission from you).  I might use your work (without any personally identifiable information) in models with privacy protection, for uses like visualizing themes in work across students.

Plagiarism 

AI use that is not cited is cheating.  Plagiarism from AI, like any other source, is a violation of academic integrity principles.  Plagiarized content earns a zero and potentially more serious academic consequences. Let’s avoid that.  For example, if you did not note that you used AI for citations but then have a hallucinated one, that can be treated as conclusive evidence of cheating (and worse than just losing points for having inaccurate citations).

Example Template

“AI Tool Used: [name and version]”

“Purpose: [brief description]”

“Learning rationale: [why this supported your learning]”

Note

You are responsible for all of your work, including any inaccurate, offensive, or otherwise unethical content, regardless of source.

Efficiency in the course is often in opposition to genuine learning. We’re all learning and creating new norms around AI, so let’s do so in ways that cultivate trust between us and make class meaningful.

As we’ll learn in this class, new technologies rarely replace old ones; they co-evolve and co-exist. So, until AI robots fully replace us, this class aims to teach you how to critically analyze, think about, and work with a variety of technologies, including ChatGPT and other AI. Some assignments and activities will explicitly ask you to use ChatGPT while others may forbid it. For each assignment, we will provide a statement about how/when AI might be used, and what it might be used for, like idea generation, writing assistance, fact finding, etc. (though no assignment will *require* it). The most important thing is to be transparent and ethical about your use of LLMs, since AI raises issues of intellectual property, academic integrity, misinformation and more. Just as the links to YouTube videos you use in your projects or citations of Wikipedia and academic articles allow us to assess where you sourced your information from, including a statement about where and how you used AI during your assignments helps us see the work you’ve done (e.g. prompt engineering, collaborative writing, idea generation, etc.). Example statements will be provided at the start of the semester. And as with the other sources you use for your writing and projects, you are solely responsible for the quality, accuracy, legality and validity of the content of anything you submit.

AI text-generation has exploded with the growth of easy-to-use tools like ChatGPT and Copilot. I am excited about the potential of this as a tool for teaching writing, especially for developing research ideas, outlining documents, and summarizing conventional wisdom. In fact, I may use AI text-generators to benchmark the clarity and brevity of your text.

However, these bots don’t automatically help you learn — learn about your topic or how to develop and communicate your own ideas.  Therefore, I have two rules about how you use AI writers in this course:

• Use AI writers only when an assignment or lesson invites you to. If an assignment doesn’t mention AI writers, you can email me to ask for clarification or act as though it’s not permitted.
• For the two major written assignments, the team report and the strategic communication proposal, the final product that you submit should clearly “convey work that is substantively yours in both content and expression.”[1] Therefore, save the AI-generated output in a file you can share with me should I ask that you turn them in. This will make it easy for me to see how you have improved the generated text.

We will give some attention in class to AI text generators, but as you use them, beware of their major pitfalls: they sometimes can’t distinguish fact from fiction, can’t say anything original, and are (so far) quite poor at offering the kind of nuanced, evidence-based logical argument we expect from college graduates.  Effective use of AI tools requires human judgment and responsibility.  As an author you are ultimately responsible for the accuracy of the information in your writing and for letting your readers know—through a footnote or appendix—how and where you’ve used an AI text generator.

[1] Stephen Hickson in Emily Heyward, “Using AI to Write Essays Isn’t Cheating, Student Says,” Canta (issue 5)

In this course, you are welcome to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools (e.g., Copilot, DALL-E, ChatGPT, etc.) to support your learning and enhance your work as long as their use aligns with the course’s objectives and academic integrity standards. You are responsible for the accuracy and quality of all AI-assisted content, ensuring it is fact-checked, ethical, and appropriate. All AI usage must be documented and cited in MLA format. For proper citation in report bibliographies, please visit the MLA webpage: https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai. Additionally, please retain chat transcripts with AI tools until one week after the end of the term as they may be requested for academic review. Use of generative AI without citation may be addressed through UW–Madison’s academic misconduct policy, specifically UWS 14.03(1)(b) Uses unauthorized materials or fabricated data in any academic exercise. If you have any questions or concerns about using AI tools or citing them correctly, please reach out for clarification and support.