ChatGPT 101: The Student Ethics Edition

Why I'm tweaking my AI use policy for asynchronous online summer courses

Key Takeaways

Here are five short takeaways from the article (from the TLDR bot):

• AI is allowed with guidelines: The author encourages thoughtful AI use in the classroom but requires students to cite tools, explain their usage, and submit chat transcripts.

• Cheating still happens: Despite clear rules, some students still misuse AI by copying full chatbot responses, which the author considers academic dishonesty.

• AI checkers are flawed: The author is cautious about AI detection tools, using them only when necessary and never as sole proof of cheating.

• AI supports teaching too: The author uses tools like Claude.ai to improve course materials, showing that AI can be helpful when used ethically.

• Focus is on learning, not punishment: The goal is to guide students toward mindful and ethical AI use, not to catch cheaters or punish mistakes.

If you’ve been following my work, you know that I’ve been experimenting with AI use cases in English first-year writing and literature classrooms since Spring 2023. I’ve survived (so far) to the last week of Spring 2025. Most of my students seem to be following my AI use policies: Acknowledge, share chats, evaluate the AI output, and tell me why you chose to use AI (also, revise and resubmit if I deem your AI use to be harmful to your learning).

But let’s face it: We all know that one of the best use cases for large language models is still cheating on college essays. I definitely do not use the word “best” here on the sense of Aristotle’s arete. By best, I mean a) ChatGPT writes a decent 100/200 level college essay, and b) The inevitable hallucinations in that bland essay aren’t likely to kill anyone.

So I was saddened but not shocked to read James Walsh saying the quiet part out loud in New York Magazine’s explosive piece “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way through College” (sorry; behind a paywall).

And it inspired me to take a look at my course syllabus policy in anticipation of my asynchronous online summer term.

AI Detectors: A Reconsideration

Even though I have all kinds of ethical problems with them, I’ve been thinking about the use of AI checkers since Anna Mills posted her own revised approach to using them. In her LinkedIn essay “Why I’m Using AI Detection After All, alongside Many Other Strategies,” Mills explains.

I will never trust AI detection as firm evidence, and I am not punishing students. If a student discusses an essay with me, shows process history, and denies AI use, I will give them the benefit of the doubt even if the detector says "AI." If they aren't able to discuss their writing, I ask students to rewrite.

My college does not provide secure and private AI detection software, and I am not ethically comfortable with copying my students’ work into something like GPTZero without their explicit consent. But just like Mills, who faced a student who refused to admit to AI use, I am finally seeing some examples of straight up cheating from my students, even though I allow AI use.

Thus, the syllabus policy revision.

I posted an earlier version of this syllabus policy to a Facebook discussion group and received some excellent feedback from Laura Dumin, Kim Philip Hansen, and others. I’ve made this version more customizable, and I’ve licensed it CC 0, so if it’s helpful, feel free to use it as a model.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT) Syllabus Policy (Please Read ALL OF THIS):

At this point, most of you are probably using generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude AI, or Microsoft Copilot. As a CWI student, you have access to [insert any tools your students have access to through their college accounts]. I have been teaching with generative AI [insert your personal experience with AI here; my example: I have been teaching with generative AI since Spring 2023 and was an Artificial Intelligence Fellow for the State of Idaho.]

[Include this section if you use AI in any way as part of your course].

In this course, I used Claude.ai to do the following:

• Review the content that I wrote for our weekly lectures and make suggestions about how to improve the tone and flow to make these lectures more accessible for students.

• Assist in creating drafts of quiz questions (I checked and verified all questions myself)

• Review my assignment instruction sheets to make them clearer for students

• Suggest revisions to my rubrics to emphasize the importance of students’ own experiences and unique voice. (example of a rubric I worked on with Claude).

• Revise my previous discussion board assignment format because they were boring and students were just using AI to cheat (and potentially violating their fellow students’ intellectual property and privacy rights by copying and pasting things into chatbots without consent).

I [do/do not] use AI to assess your work. [if you do use AI for assessment, explain exactly how you use it. For example, I use My Essay Feedback for formative assessment in some classes].

I will allow you to use generative artificial intelligence in any way that YOU think is ethical, subject to the conditions outlined below. Keep in mind that [college name] defines the following as a violation of academic integrity: “submission of work created by artificial intelligence tools as one’s own work.” [modify to reflect your own college’s policy].

If you choose to use any generative AI tool in this class, you MUST do the following:

1. Cite the tool (see Cyborgs and Centaurs for more information on how to do this).

2. Write an acknowledgement statement at the end of your work explaining how and why you used generative AI for this assignment. Include a link to your chats OR a screenshot or Word document of the chat if a link is not available.

We all know what cheating with ChatGPT is. It’s when you take the prompt for an assignment, paste it into a chatbot, and ask the chatbot to do the whole assignment for you. Do not do this.

I reserve the right based on my assessment of your assignment to require you to revise and resubmit all or parts of the assignment if I conclude that you have not used generative AI appropriately.

Keep in mind that you are accountable for what you submit. AI is occasionally wrong. It makes up “facts” and sources. An AI response may be too superficial, avoid taking a stance, or lack the specific, concrete personal experiences that I am looking for in your work. In other words, using AI may actually hurt your grade. I am interested in your thoughts, your voice, and your connections with course content.

If I suspect that you have used generative AI tools, and you have not included the required citation and acknowledgement statement, you will earn a placeholder 0 for the assignment. I will then ask you to use one of the commonly available AI checkers such as GPTZero to check your own work for inappropriate AI use and send me a screenshot of the report. You will then need to meet with me either in person or through Zoom to talk about the assignment and your AI use if you want to earn any credit for the assignment. This conversation will include knowledge checks for course content.

“Generative Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT) Policy” by Liza Long is licensed CC 0.

Some Final Thoughts

I teach with genAI. I require students to use it in my ENGL 102 courses. I have optional but encouraged AI assignments in my other courses including my asynchronous Survey of World Mythology course that I’m teaching this summer. I just want students to be mindful about when, where, how, and why they are using generative AI tools. Copying and pasting a prompt into a chatbot to spit out a pret a porter essay is cheating. Having a discussion with a bot to better understand Claude Levi-Strauss's mythemes is not cheating. It's learning.

I am not losing any more sleep over students who are dead set on using ChatGPT to cheat than I did when students paid paper mills to write their papers for them. I’m not particularly obsessed with students who cheat and never have been. I see my role as encouraging the learners.

So many of my students see the free version of ChatGPT as a Google search, and as we all know here, that’s a big mistake. Students need to know what LLMs actually are (so they don’t end up having crushes on them or thinking they are gods—two recent headlines). They need to think about the ethical issues. And they need to know about the hallucinations (which are getting worse right now).

What about you? What are your plans for summer asynchronous online courses? I’d love to hear what you’re seeing in your classroom. Let me know on Linked In or Bluesky—and happy prompting.

Disclosure: Other than the TLDR section and the clearly ChatGPT 4o generated image that accompanies this article, I did not use AI to write any of this post.