Effective Date: May 18, 2026
Scope: OWU Faculty, Staff, and Students
Purpose: To define the responsible, ethical, and creative use of Generative AI (GenAI) in alignment with OWU's commitment to academic integrity, critical thinking, and liberal arts learning.
Preamble: GenAI offers new ways to learn, work, and create. These tools are meant to support, not replace, our own critical thinking and skill building. Given the variety of ways AI can be integrated across our campus, faculty will carefully guide how and when AI is used in their courses to align with learning objectives. This ensures these tools are embraced when they enhance learning, and are restricted when they might hinder essential student development.
1. Guiding Principles & Values
In accordance with the OWU AI Guidance, this policy is rooted in the following values:
- Human-Centered Learning: At OWU, we value learning and the learning process. AI is a tool to augment, not replace, human intellect, creativity, and the development of a student's unique voice. All GenAI outputs should be reviewed by a human.
- Academic Integrity: All work submitted at OWU is presumed to be the original work of the student unless otherwise cited or permitted.
- Transparency: We value openness regarding the role of technology in the creative process. To ensure clarity around the origin of their work, students are expected to disclose AI assistance in accordance with faculty requirements for any assignment or project. Faculty and Staff should also disclose AI use.
- Student AI Literacy: Students will have the opportunity to learn about AI Literacy and the ethical and responsible use of AI.
- Equity: The University will strive to ensure that all members of the community have equitable access to AI literacy through training opportunities and core AI tools.
2. Faculty Autonomy and Classroom Use
OWU recognizes the potential of GenAI to enhance student learning and skill development but also recognizes that the pedagogical value is determined by faculty and by discipline. Individual faculty members and instructors are granted full autonomy regarding AI usage in their courses.
- Course-Level Authority: Faculty have the right to prohibit, limit, or encourage the use of AI for each of their courses.
- Syllabus Requirements: Faculty must clearly state their AI policy in the syllabus, including assignment-specific acceptance, limitations, or complete prohibition. Course level statements are provided in the FAQ as a starting point to ensure consistency across courses. If AI is permitted in any way, faculty are encouraged to be as specific as possible and give examples for student clarity.
- Academic Misconduct: Any use of AI that violates the instructor's syllabus policy or fails to meet citation standards will be treated as a violation of the OWU Academic Honesty Policy.
- Accessibility: Students with documented accommodations through Accessibility Services may be granted specific areas of AI use that override general course prohibitions. These accommodations will be evaluated on a case by case basis and require prior approval from both Accessibility Services and the faculty member.
- Course Prep and Usage: Faculty have the autonomy to use AI for class prep purposes (e.g., syllabus accessibility check, discussion question ideas, etc.). Faculty must model AI transparency (see the FAQ for details). In all cases, faculty must review any AI outputs to ensure accuracy and fairness.
- Discipline-Specific Standards: Faculty members are expected to be aware of and uphold professional standards for their respective disciplines.
- Intellectual Property: Faculty must respect student-produced content and disclose whether student materials will be submitted to AI models.
3. Student Responsibilities
- Attribution: If AI is permitted, students must provide a disclosure statement or citation (e.g., using MLA/APA AI citation styles) detailing which tool was used and for what purpose.
- Accuracy and Accountability: Students are responsible for the accuracy of all content they submit. "AI Hallucinations" (false information), biased outputs, or factual errors are solely the responsibility of the student; thus, students must verify all outputs they use.
- Overreliance: While specific thresholds are at the faculty's discretion, students are cautioned that relying on AI for the majority of a work's substance often fails to meet the learning objectives of a liberal arts education and will hurt their learning and acquisition of key knowledge and skills expected in their careers.
- Academic Honesty: Students are required to be familiar with the OWU Academic Honesty Policy. Any use of AI that violates the instructor's syllabus policy or fails to meet citation standards will be treated as a violation of the policy.
- Intellectual Property: Students are not permitted to upload OWU faculty, staff, or other students materials into AI models without prior permission.
4. Operational Use
Staff and administrators are encouraged to use AI to enhance efficiency, provided such use adheres to University data security protocols. This section also applies to faculty using AI for non-course instruction purposes, such as faculty committee work.
- Data Privacy: Personal Identifiable Information (PII) regarding students or employees, confidential financial records, FERPA protected data, and proprietary research must not be entered into AI models. Any exceptions should be reviewed by Information Services prior to such usage. Additional information on data usage is available in the Data Classification Guidelines.
- Communications: Internal and external documents (newsletters, official reports, campus communications, etc.) generated with significant AI assistance must be reviewed not only for brand voice and factual accuracy, but also for alignment with OWU's ethical standards, including bias awareness.
- Supervisor Guidance: Supervisors should provide general direction to employees on AI usage and expectations.
- Performance and Personnel Analysis: Gen AI must not be used as the primary tool to make final decisions regarding employee hiring, termination, disciplinary actions, or wage and benefit allocations. If AI is used to assist in summarizing performance data, this usage must be disclosed to the employee, and supervisors must thoroughly review the output to ensure it is free from algorithmic bias and factual errors.
5. Research and Intellectual Property
- Grant Proposals: Researchers must adhere to federal and agency-specific guidelines (e.g., NSF, NIH) regarding AI-generated text in grant applications.
- Ownership: AI-generated content is currently not copyrightable under U.S. law. OWU community members should be aware that content generated by AI may not be legally protected as their exclusive intellectual property.
- Publishing: Researchers should review publications prior to submitting proposals to ensure they understand how their work may or may not be used to train AI models per the publication guidelines.
6. Ethics, Security, and Environmental Stewardship
- Bias Awareness: Users must remain vigilant regarding the inherent biases in AI training data that may perpetuate stereotypes or exclusions.
- Security: Only University-vetted AI applications should be used for sensitive institutional tasks. Users must not share their OWU login credentials with third-party AI platforms.
- Environmental Stewardship: Users should remain mindful that generative AI queries require significantly higher energy and water consumption than traditional digital tasks, contributing to a substantial ecological footprint for each prompt processed.
- Malicious Use and Impersonation: Using GenAI to create deceptive content, deepfakes, or unauthorized voice/image cloning of any OWU community member is not permitted.
- Intellectual Property: Some AI models may be using faculty, staff, or student-developed materials without permission, attribution, or compensation. This unauthorized use of intellectual labor creates ethical and copyright concerns that the community must consider when engaging with these platforms.
7. Policy Review
Given the rapid evolution of AI technology, this policy will be reviewed annually by the Provost's Office and the AI Task Force to ensure it continues to serve the educational mission of Ohio Wesleyan University.
