File: Instructional Strategies

Documenting Your Use of Chat GPT: A Guide for Students


Jess’s Recommendation
This guide is an excellent example of how to provide students with clear information about how they should cite the use of generative AI in assignments. As an instructor, consider how and when you would like students to document and disclose their use of AI in assignments and try generating your own guide.
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT can help you brainstorm ideas for essays, policy briefs, draft outlines, generate rough drafts, analyze texts, and compile annotated bibliographies. While tools like ChatGPT are helpful, they are only tools. Even the world’s best nails are useless without a hammer -- and without a person who knows how to swing it. Library research skills are the hammer you’ll need in order to use ChatGPT effectively. Whenever you use AI tools to write a paper, essay, article, or policy brief, you should include an explanation of how you used the tool, the prompts you used to generate output, and how you fact-checked the output.