Setting up an AI Policy for Your School Or Classroom
Some helpful information and a sample policy
As some of you who read this may know, not only am I a 20-plus year school librarian, and I am also on a school board. In fact, I am the only school librarian on a school board in the state of N.J., and we have over 500 school districts in the state. In my role as a school board member, we were recently asked to update our plagiarism policy. With ChatGPT recently being introduced and seeing some of the concerns around academic integrity, I felt like it was the perfect time for us to add language to our policy about AI. In March, when I started looking for examples of another school district that had a policy in place, I could find nothing. So I started searching the world of higher- ed and found some great examples. The problem is that I did not bookmark the one example that I ended up taking language from, and I tried really hard to find it again but could not. So I apologize in advance for not properly citing the college.
After numerous talks with the administration and approval from the rest of the BOE members, this is the policy that the South Orange - Maplewood School District passed and implemented.
You will see that it gives teachers choices in whether to allow a student to use AI for an assignment. And it also makes it clear to students that if they had used AI they must state that they did. There are times when using AI is appropriate and A.I.ould be used, but there are other times when it should not. A school district needs to allow the teacher the ability without issuing a district-wide ban.
Another good resource to use when looking to write a policy:
Ditch That Text Book has some really great AI resources available and I really like this AI Guide to Policy writing. It includes many great links and resources.
Have you written a policy for your classroom, or does your district have one? Share it on our Facebook group. Let’s keep the conversation going there.
Does your school have one? Take this poll and let us know.