Institutional/Syllabus Policies and AI

July 8, 2023. Gödel, Escher, Bach, and AI. Douglas Hofstadter: A dazzlingly fast chatbot cannot replace the authentic and reflective voice of a thinking, living human being.
Book: Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity. April G. Dawson. [A] concise primer intended to increase student awareness of the protocols, possibilities, and ethical implications of using AI systems in their legal education studies, while also giving professors assurance that their students are informed of the same. 
early 2024. AI Guidance For Schools Toolkit. Teach AI. This toolkit is designed to help education authorities, school leaders, and teachers create thoughtful guidance to help their communities realize the potential benefits of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) in primary and secondary education while understanding and mitigating the potential risks.
“AI Preparedness Checklist: Artificial Intelligence norms and best practices for institutions.” 1EdTech. “This AI Preparedness Checklist was created by 1EdTech’s Emerging Digital Pedagogies Innovation Leadership Network (ILN) to provide institutions with guiding prompts for establishing protocols, policies, and best practices for using AI in teaching and learning.”
March 17, 2026. Using locally-hosted Small Language Models (SLMs) to protect student, patient and research subject data in Health Professions Education. Ken Masters, Sofia Valanci-Aroesty, Jennifer Benjamin, Neil Mehta, Heather MacNeill. “A major concern is data privacy, resulting in a potential exposure of student, patient, and research participant data. Using locally-hosted Small Language Models to assist the teacher and researcher in completing tasks while minimising the risk of data exposure.”

AI Administrators

Oct 19, 2023. Q&A: Being a University’s First Chief AI Officer. Lauren Coffey. Mark Daley, CAIO of Western University in Canada, answers questions about his groundbreaking new role.

AI Governance

AI in Academia: Policies, Guidelines, and Governance. “This map highlights higher education institutions shaping AI through policies, guidelines, and governance frameworks. More campuses are being added regularly.View the comprehensive directory of institutional AI-related documents or read our analysis and recommendations.”
Sept 3, 2025. AI Is Everywhere In Higher Ed. Where’s The AI Governance? Dr. Aviva Legatt. “The lack of formal governance frameworks leaves institutions vulnerable to FERPA violations, algorithmic bias, accessibility failures, and erosion of student trust—particularly when high-stakes decisions are driven by AI systems with unclear oversight.”
March 18, 2026. From Prompt to Practice: A Framework for Transparent GenAI Use in Higher Education. Carol Damm and Lance Eaton. “As generative artificial intelligence reshapes instructional workflows at colleges and universities, a four-level transparency framework can help education developers calibrate documentation and disclosure practices to support ethical responsibility and maintain student trust.”
Apr 6, 2026. Two New Resources to Help Your Institution Navigate AI. “If you’re a provost, dean, or academic leader trying to figure out where your institution stands on AI—and where it should be heading—you’re not alone. The pace of change in generative AI has outstripped most institutions’ ability to develop thoughtful policy, let alone keep track of what peers are doing or what’s actually working in classrooms.”
GenAI Safety in Your District. AI for Education. “This guide provides a tiered risk framework for the most common AI tools reaching students and educators. Use it to identify what to address first, inform vetting decisions, and start productive conversations with your leadership team.”

Cheating – general info

Why Do Students Cheat? University of Minnesota.
February 25, 2023. 6 Tenets of Postplagiarism: Writing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Sarah Elaine Eaton. In the final chapter of Plagiarism in Higher Education: Tackling Tough Topics in Academic Integrity (2021) I contemplate the future of plagiarism and academic integrity. I introduced the idea of life in a postplagiarism world; thinking about the impact of artificial intelligence on writing. Here, I expand on those ideas. These 6 tenets characterize the post-plagiarism age.
Sept 12, 2023. Instead of Policing Students, we need to Abolish Cheating.
12 October 2023. Postplagiarism: Transdisciplinary ethics and integrity in the age of artificial intelligence and neurotechnology. Sarah Elaine Eaton. In a postplagiarism era, humans are compelled to grapple with questions about ethics and integrity for a socially just world at a time when advanced technology cannot be unbundled from education or everyday life.

Higher Ed decisions on/uses of AI

Aug 21, 2023. University of Michigan to provide custom AI tools to campus community. The University of Michigan is providing custom generative artificial intelligence platforms for its entire community….The services will be available to all active University of Michigan faculty, staff and students on the Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn campuses and Michigan Medicine.
Dec 2023. AI Preparedness Checklist. 1EdTech. This AI Preparedness Checklist was created by 1EdTech’s Emerging Digital Pedagogies Innovation Leadership Network (ILN) to provide institutions with guiding prompts for establishing protocols, policies, and best practices for using AI in teaching and learning.
Dec 13, 2023. Generative AI in Academic Research: Perspectives and Cultural Norms. Cornell University Task Force. This report offers perspectives and practical guidelines to the Cornell community, specifically on the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in the practice and dissemination of academic research.
early 2024. Foundational Policy Ideas for AI in Education. Teach AI.
Jan 30, 2025. Teaching: Is higher ed prepared for AI’s impact? It doesn’t seem so. Beth McMurtrie. “A couple of surveys have come out recently that shed light on what college leaders and faculty members are doing with generative artificial intelligence. The findings speak to the uncertainty, ambivalence, and lack of readiness that higher education is feeling about these tools.”
2025. ETHICAL Principles AI Framework for Higher Education. Wynants, S., Childers, G., De La Torre Roman, Y. , Budar-Turner, D., & Vasquez, P. is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. “This framework recognizes the rapidly evolving nature of AI technologies and the varying needs of different departments, colleges, and institutions.”
Mar 19, 2025. AI, Language and the Right to Be Understood. Jarek Janio. “Language encompasses far more than grammar; it carries cultural expectations, rhetorical styles and unspoken social norms that may not be intuitive for those from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. A loud, confident message delivered with the right tone, phrasing and style can sometimes gain more traction than a quieter, more tentative one, even if the latter contains more insightful ideas. “
March 25, 2025. How Colleges Are Responding to AI. AAC&U recording. “From policy development and curricular reform to faculty development and classroom innovation, this discussion will provide a roadmap of practical approaches that institutions can use to navigate AI’s evolving role in education. Whether you’re an administrator, faculty member, instructional designer, or student success professional, you’ll gain actionable insights to help your institution plan for success with AI.”
AI Usage Policies in Higher Education: A Policy Handbook. Dr. Aviva Legatt. “This handbook is a free, community-driven resource documenting AI usage policies across higher education institutions worldwide. It catalogs 100+ verified institutional, system-level, and association-level AI policies, categorized by scope: Enterprise (IT governance, data security, procurement), Academic (teaching, research, faculty guidelines), and Student Usage (academic integrity, acceptable use, admissions). It also covers enterprise risk considerations for agentic AI, relevant periodicals, and key statistics on AI policy adoption.”

National policy responses

2025. AI in Academia: Policies, Guidelines, and Governance. Joe Sabado. “This map highlights higher education institutions shaping AI through policies, guidelines, and governance frameworks. More campuses are being added regularly. See our broader list of institutional policies and syllabi/classroom policies.”
March 3, 2025. Digital Education Council AI Literacy framework. “The Digital Education Council AI Literacy framework takes a human-centred approach to AI literacy, emphasising the importance of human skills such as critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence. It offers higher education institutions with structured guidance on developing AI literacy approaches that will equip individuals with key foundational AI competencies and industry-specific applications.”
July 31, 2023. FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy, Unleashing America’s Cyber Talent. While the focus here is on cyber talent and not AI, it may be a useful document to understand where the US hopes to take the future of work. This will, undoubtedly, be in play along with how AI will shape the future of work.
Link accessed Sept 15, 2023. Guide on the use of Generative AI. enerative artificial intelligence (AI) tools offer many potential benefits to Government of Canada (GC) institutions. Federal institutions should explore potential uses of generative AI tools for supporting and improving their operations. However, because these tools are evolving, they should not be used in all cases. Federal institutions must be cautious and evaluate the risks before they start using them. The use of these tools should be restricted to instances where risks can be effectively managed.
Dec 2023. AI Policies & Practices Toolkit. This toolkit offers such guidance to assist administrators, faculty, and staff in navigating the AI landscape. The core of the toolkit, the AI Education Policy & Practice Ecosystem Framework, outlines three separate institutional dimensions – Governance, Operations, and Pedagogy – and briefly identifies practices and processes associated with each dimension.

Syllabus ideas and information

The Sentient Syllabus Project. Lots of great information here for syllabus and course ideas.
Classroom Policies for AI Generative Tools. Created by Lance Eaton. A great resource where people have shared their ideas.
July 31, 2023. Should You Add an AI Policy to Your Syllabus? What to consider in drafting your own course policy on students’ use of tools like ChatGPT.
Aug 1, 2023. Developing Your Default GenAI Policy. From Lance Cummings. As we move into the AI era, educators will need to think about how this new technology is shaping their own attitudes and those of their students.
Aug 8, 2023. Developing your GenAI Syllabus Policy. From Lance Cummings. (A bit different from his other link.) Students will encounter many different attitudes towards AI in the classroom. What’s true in one class will not be true in another, requiring each instructor to be explicit about their own attitudes towards AI and how that informs their policy.
Jan 2024. How do I Consider Options that May Increase the Likelihood that Students Will Follow my Generative AI Course Policy? University of Massachusetts – Amherst. As you think about your generative AI course policy, you may find it useful to go through this flowchart as an iterative process: starting with what you think your course policy might be, working through the decision points, and reworking your policy accordingly.

Survey Results

Feb 2025. Student Generative AI Survey 2025. Josh Freeman, Higher Ed Policy Institute. “Peppered through the study is clear evidence of a digital divide, whether women are using AI tools less and for less confident reasons or those with greater means are more able to access premium products.”

University Policies

AI Observatory. A list of university policies on AI from Canada and beyond.
Institutional AI Policies & Governance Structures. Lance Eaton has begun this spreadsheet and asked people to send him policies so that he can add to it.
UC Berkley. Appropriate Use of Generative AI Tools.
Tufts. Generative AI Tools. “This page provides guidance on a broad range of popular AI tools, from image generators to chatbots to productivity tools, and more.”

WCET Webcast Recording and Resources

WCET members, look for our new AI toolkit to be released soon; here is a preview excerpt from the toolkit: “Policies and guidelines may range from those that ban the use of AI in the classroom altogether, to those that allow and even encourage use. The latter often require students to attribute AI-generated content (see below), thus ensuring that AI technologies are used ethically in the learning process.” Join WCET to access this resource!

Biden administration – archived AI policies

Thanks to Will Van Reyk for posting this on LinkedIn.