AI Guidelines – Liberal Arts

Liberal Arts Department AI Policy. This was developed by Liberal Arts faculty and is to be read alongside the CCS Institutional AI Statement, which takes precedence.

The Liberal Arts Department teaches many subjects, and AI use that is appropriate in one area or in one assignment may be unhelpful or counterproductive in another. What is appropriate depends on what students are expected to learn, and individual instructors are best placed to make that judgement. Faculty therefore have authority to write their own AI guidelines, subject to the CCS Institutional AI Statement.

Every syllabus should state clearly which AI uses are permitted or restricted for that course or assignment. A useful example for art historians is the AHA Guiding Principles for AI in History Education.

Students are responsible for knowing and following class policies. They should read syllabi carefully and ask before using AI on any assignment where the scope is unclear to them.

Default Guidelines

The following apply as defaults across all Liberal Arts courses. Faculty may depart from these guidelines, but unless a syllabus states otherwise:

1. AI may be used for:

  • Brainstorming to expand on your original ideas
  • Translating your text into English, with citation
  • Seeking information to clarify concepts from readings or class discussion
  • Identifying other perspectives and additional views on a topic
  • Feedback on drafts you have already written, to improve clarity or identify gaps, provided you critically assess what is suggested and rewrite on your own
  • Final editing of spelling and grammar with tools like the free version of Grammarly, to help you identify patterns of error – so long as AI does not rewrite your text for you

2. AI may not be used for:

  • Generating text for submission
  • Rewriting your text for submission
  • Synthesizing sources into your submitted analysis or argument
  • Using AI as a factual source without verification or citation

3. Students must keep evidence of their writing process. AI chat logs, googledocs with saved history of edits and original outlines, drafts, etc should be kept for all Liberal Arts coursework.

4. Students must disclose AI use for submitted work. Include a brief disclosure statement at the end of your work stating which tool you used, what you used it for, and how you reviewed or revised its output. Here are some examples:

I used ChatGPT-4 to brainstorm ideas for the argument of this paper before I started drafting. The ideas in the paper are my own development of those starting points.

I used the free version of Grammarly to identify grammar and spelling errors in my final draft. All corrections were reviewed and accepted or rejected by me.

I used Claude to give feedback on a draft I had already written, asking it to identify unclear passages. I revised the paper in response to that feedback, making my own decisions about what to change and writing the passages myself.

Resources