AI Course Policies and Assignment Guidelines
As instructors craft their AI policies, recognizing the prevalence of AI use is crucial. AI output reads as authoritative as well as detailed and comprehensive, and only a person who is informed on the subject that AI output is generated can well assess its accuracy or usefulness. Students new to a discipline are likely to over-estimate AI’s accuracy and usefulness, and will need careful guidance and education to develop AI critical thinking.
AI Policy in Montclair Syllabus
As of Fall 2026, the Montclair Syllabus template will come with a designated field for AI policy. Faculty will be able to choose from pre-set AI policy templates, including no use of AI, some use of AI, or unrestricted use of AI, or to write their own AI policy.
Faculty Resources:
Institutional Context: Academic Dishonesty Policy
The University’s Academic Dishonesty policy includes as an example of dishonest behavior “unauthorized assistance or unauthorized materials from any source (including but not limited to oral, audio, physical, digital, text messages, generative artificial intelligence (AI), photographs, apps, websites, and services) to generate a work product.” The emphasis on unauthorized recognizes instructors' authority to establish clear expectations about whether and how these tools may be used in their courses.
Further, the University’s policy presses students to acknowledge use of AI: “Cite a generative AI tool whenever work created by the tool is paraphrased, quoted, or incorporated into one’s own work product. If generative AI was used to edit one’s own prose, the use of the tool for this function should be acknowledged in the work.”