Artificial Intelligence Literacy

The BGSU Code of Academic Conduct includes several definitions related to academic honesty, including:

• Cheating: Using or attempting to use unauthorized assistance, materials, information, or study aids in any academic exercise. Submitting substantial portions of the same academic work more than once without permission, or using another person as a substitute to take an examination or quiz.
• Fabrication: Falsification or invention of any information, data, research or citation in any academic exercise.
• Plagiarism: Representing as one’s own in any academic exercise the words or ideas of another, including but not limited to, quoting or paraphrasing without proper citation.
• Facilitating Academic Dishonesty: Helping or attempting to help another commit an act of academic dishonesty.

As of the Fall 2024 semester, there are no campus-wide policies regarding the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom. You should always ask your instructor about their individual policy regarding the use of AI.

• Check your syllabus for a statement about using AI from your professor first. If there is no statement, ask your professor or TA before using AI tools in your coursework. Unauthorized use of AI could be considered cheating.
• To avoid plagiarism, it is necessary to cite any quotes, paraphrasing and ideas you get from AI, just as you would with other sources. Some professors may also want you to explain how you used AI in completing the assignment and/or turn in the content the AI tool generated.
• Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or Gemini may make up credible-sounding citations to sources that do not exist, which is called “hallucinating" or "fabricating". Make sure you locate the full source and read it before using it in your research project. If you are having trouble locating a source, ask a BGSU librarian for help.
• Consider where a Generative AI gets its information from. AI is trained on information from the internet and published sources. Image generation AI creates images from existing works created by artists on the internet. How would you feel if something you created was used to train artificial intelligence, but you were not compensated by that technology company? 

• Consider what uses of AI are acceptable within your courses. Can students use AI in some stages of the researching, writing or creating process? As a tool for brainstorming or studying? If so, be specific about what is allowed and what is not, and what the expectations are for citing AI tools. 
• Include a clear statement about AI parameters on your syllabus and discuss it with your students. The Center for Faculty Excellence has several sample AI Syllabus statements in their "Just in Time" resources on their website. 
• There are several resources available in the For Instructors page on this guide that can help instructors design meaningful and authentic assignments that can incorporate the use of AI, assist students to think critically about AI, and/or deter the use of AI to complete assignments and activities.

AI Writing Detectors

Research has shown that most AI Writing Detectors are not successful at detecting machine-generated writing, resulting in both false negatives and false positives. This results in tagging a student's paper as being written as AI when it wasn't or a paper that was written by AI clearing the detection. These detectors are also biased against non-English speaking students and neurodivergent students; many times these students' writing styles will be tagged as machine-generated when it is simply their writing style. 

Instead, transparency and compassionate conversations with students about the benefits and pitfalls of AI use, as well as robust assignment rubrics encourage authentic student work.

Below are some articles and research studies about the issues with AI Detectors and the impact they can have on students.

News Articles

Research Articles