Generative AI Policy in APUSH
I’ve assigned my first research project for the year, the “What does it mean to be American?” project. If you want to see what it looks like, you can read about it in this earlier blog post. As part of the project I allowed for some use of GenAI in limited capacities, but the project instructions were no extremely clear on every scenario where GenAI could potentially be used.
My school doesn’t have a school-wide policy for the use of GenAI. I’d describe my views on it as slightly more open to it than most. However, I didn’t want to tell my students I’d allow it without setting clear expectations and boundaries. For that reason I have created two documents. One that outlines the policy of using GenAI in my class more thoroughly and a graphic organizer that students can use to document their use of GenAI. Please feel free to use or adapt either one of these for your classroom.
“Students should be actively engaged in their learning while participating in this course. This means that they are listening, reading, and asking questions about the material.”
This document is guided by the principle that students should be actively engaged in their learning while participating in this course. This means that they are listening, reading, and asking questions about the material. If they are using GenAI to replace any of these elements, it is not an acceptable use in my class.
The policy outlines various ways in which students can use GenAI to in the class without replacing any of these elements. These include:
Brainstorming ideas for research projects
Focusing and directing their research
Simplifying complex concepts to form foundational knowledge
Refine their writing as a proofreading tool.
It also includes best practices to employ to ensure that lines don’t get crossed and that students are getting the most out of this powerful tool. These best practices include:
Reading a source document before asking GenAI to summarize it
Checking their understanding of material with GenAI
Asking for sources to any facts produced by GenAI
Asking GenAI the same question multiple times
Asking GenAI if there’s gaps in scholarship of a topic
Asking for the historiography of a topic before jumping into research.
The document ends with the unacceptable uses of GenAI in the class and it starts with “Students should not attempt to pass off work, which they did not produce, as their own.” as the first clear line that should not be crossed. The next three listed unacceptable uses include when students:
…use it as a substitute for reading source material.
…cite anything produced by GenAI as fact without a second source for backup
…blindly adopt an argument generated by GenAI.
The main purpose of this organizer is not to harshly police every use of GenAI in my class. Instead it’s meant to teach students the various ways in which the tool can responsibly be used and guard against some of the pitfalls of GenAI that still exist.
It asks students to document three different processes in determining whether something produced by GenAI is useful.
Verification
In order to remind students that some responses by GenAI can be flawed or incorrect, they are asked to verify that they have asked the same question multiple times. Next, students are to ask for the sources that back any claims and facts produced by the GenAI platform. You can provide students with standard questions that students can easily copy and paste each time to achieve these tasks. For example:
Can you please provide a new response to the previous command?
Can you please provide real sources for the central claims to your previous response?
Identifying Bias
The source material for GenAI platforms has been all of the material produced and found on the internet. Therefore, the product of any GenAI prompt may reflect these biases. To protect from repeating biased information, students are forced to ask about multiple perspectives. You can provide students with standard questions that students can easily copy and paste each time to achieve these tasks. For example:
Can you please provide a second interpretation to the same historical events you described?
Can you describe how historians who are female/ people of color/ from other countries interpreted these same events?
Understanding
This section is more straight forward. It’s meant to document how GenAI was used to generate understanding of a certain topic. You can provide students with standard questions that students can easily copy and paste each time to achieve these tasks. For example:
How has the understanding of this/these event(s) changed over time?
Can you please describe what happened before the events that you described?
Can you please summarize how this/these event(s) unfolded)
Can you please describe what happened after this/these event(s)?
Other Uses
This section might grow later, but similarly to the “Understanding” column it’s meant to document other various acceptable uses of GenAI in my class. For most of these uses, students would have to input their original work first and ask GenAI to proofread, identify errors, or provide a counterargument to help build a stronger position.
Reflection
Finally students are asked to reflect on their use of GenAI and the final output. They’re asked to affirm that the product was useful or not. If it is, it allows students to organize the various conversations they’ve had with GenAI for faster reference in the future.
Conclusion
Ultimately, these two documents reiterate academic skills that we’ve always taught our students. The only difference is that we are adapting those skills to the new technological landscape. It is critical that we, as social studies teachers, make a strong effort to teach our students responsible uses of these tools. A failure to do so may leave them unprepared for the future, or at higher risk to use these tools in unethical ways.