the tricky part is that AI changes weekly. So how can we be concrete about something so fluid?
Here’s how I’ve started to think about it: Be flexible about tools, but concrete about values.
Students don’t need us to predict the future of AI. They need us to articulate the principles that guide our choices. That might be things like:
Transparency: Always disclose when AI is used. Integrity: Use AI to assist thinking, not replace it. Learning: Choose methods that strengthen your own skills. When students internalize these values, they can adapt them to whatever new tool emerges next semester: Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or something we haven’t heard of yet.
A good AI policy, like a good syllabus, isn’t a list of prohibitions. It’s a shared framework for reasoning through change.