MU Faculty Council to vote on AI use scale policy
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The University of Missouri Faculty Council is set to vote on an artificial intelligence policy that will categorize students' assignments by allowed AI use.
According to Council documents, if approved, all graded course assessments of student work will also include a number label from a zero through three scale.
Assignments where an instructor allows no AI use are considered “Level 0" while “Level 3” would be assignments where professors are OK with AI helping on bigger tasks.
The label is meant to communicate the expectation of AI use for projects and promote responsible AI use.
"The goal is to increase transparency, allow better communication about expectations, and to protect academic integrity," AI Committee Chair Kevin Brown said in a statement. "We’re hoping that this policy will help to proactively address student concerns about AI."
ABC 17 News spoke with around a dozen students on MU's campus who all said that AI use is typically on a case-by-case basis across classes and instructors. Brown added the university does not have a list of approved or preferred AI programs that instructors recommend.
"Instructors at Mizzou have the freedom to decide how AI can be used and not used in their individual classroom," Brown said.
Students generally reported that instructors are evenly split between banning AI, occasionally using it, and integrating it into their classwork.
"I feel like on campus, the dependency isn't necessarily there," said Sarah Tarpley, who is a student at MU's digital storytelling program. "I feel like a lot of people gravitate towards it, like they want to use it for ideas and stuff like that."
Students also say if AI is allowed, a majority of instructors only allow it for brainstorming and expanding on ideas.
"The only really allowed use of it was for brainstorming, researching or trying to figure out what you would write about, but not for writing itself," MU psychology student Zach Zellmer said.
"While the majority of instructors still do not allow AI use, there are more and more instructors who are incorporating AI into assignments to help prepare our students for the workforce, in which AI knowledge will be increasingly valuable," Brown said.
Geography student Michael Murphy said one of his geography classes allows AI in research when finding sources. However, students must report what program they used and review the source's page to make sure it's a valid source.
"They allow us to use AI to generate prompts for like project ideas or to generate sources for our assignments, but they also want us to include how we used the AI or which AI we used," Murphy said.
Council documents add that even if passed, AI use levels will ultimately remain up to each instructor.
"While the majority of instructors still do not allow AI use, there are more and more instructors who are incorporating AI into assignments to help prepare our students for the workforce, in which AI knowledge will be increasingly valuable," Brown said.
The Faculty Council meeting is at 3:30 p.m. Thursday in 205 Cornell Hall.
