I often find requests to ‘declare use of generative AI’ frustratingly vague. There’s so many different potential uses. And use can be reported at so many different levels of granularity.
Then there’s many grey areas. My university’s policy is that students cannot submit generative AI work as their own, for assignments or theses. How does that apply to coding? What does it mean if the student thoughtfully writes a detailed prompt and then uses a coding agent to produce code for a statistical analysis?
Some peer-reviewed journals have asked for reporting of every line of code that is generated by AI. This would be incredibly complex to account for if you are using a coding agent or assistant. For much of my code I write the first few letters, then the AI takes over for the rest of the line.
To help move things along, here’s an initial list of potential uses, ordered by level of appropriateness for undergraduate studies (and thanks to my colleagues for helping develop this). My colleagues and I are developing a pro-forma for student assignments so they can tick off their uses and explain further if necessary. This covers writing, research and coding.
Comment if you have other uses I’ve missed!
I think I’m going to start using the same proforma for paper submissions, as it clears up uses a lot.
I’ve divided it into: (1) ‘allowed uses no further explanation needed’ the student just checks a box, no further explanation necessary for these. (2) ‘allowed uses, need more explanation’ the student needs to write some explanation of what they did. (3) Uses not allowed.
The division into these three categories depends on the class and the learning goals, so they are just a rough guide.
Research and writing
Allowed uses, no further explanation needed
Asked for advice on how to improve my writing
Brainstorming
Creating practice exams
Creating summaries of text for me to read
Translating materials to another language for me to read
Used AI powered search engines, but then read source material myself
Allowed uses, need more explanation
Used grammar editors or AI powered autocomplete to help me write
Used to suggest a structure for my assignment
Used to re-write parts of my assignment
Used to find references and attribute them in text
Created summaries of main sources that I then referred to write my assignment
Attached reference documents to my prompts to help with writing
Used to generate graphics and visualizations
Used AI powered search engines, but then read source material myself
Uses not allowed
Used for writing parts of the assignment
Used to write code that generates data
Used to generate figures, including data figures
AI tools were the only tools used to identify references
Asked AI to complete the assessment task based on materials provided by the lecturer
Used AI to paraphrase other text for use in my assignment
Coding
Allowed uses, no further explanation needed
Asked for tips on fixing bugs
Used deep research to help me find online tutorials
Created tutorials for coding
Used to explain code
Allowed uses, need more explanation
Used an AI autocomplete feature
Used to write code based on my own carefully worded instructions
Used prompts that included reference documents to write code
Used to help improve prompts before using those prompts to write code
Used to make an infographic about a methodology or protocol
Uses not allowed
- Used to complete the assignment based on attaching materials provided by the lecturer