Recognizing that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to “enhance and transform” a student’s educational experience, the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education this summer adopted a policy to regulate student use of AI — aiming to ensure responsible use and maintain academic integrity.
“As we know, the world of artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, has had a profound impact on education over the last few years, both positive and negative, and it is not an area we can simply ignore,” said Board President Nubia DuVall Wilson.
Policy 2365 — Acceptable Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence — was created to provide guidelines and expectations for students including using generative AI technologies for assignments that create new content from prompts for producing text, images, videos or music.
The policy was recommended by the District’s education policy consultants, Strauss Esmay Associates, which the Board, “in close consultation with our Curriculum and Instruction administrators, has adapted to the needs of our District and adopted,” said DuVall Wilson. “…Our District previously adopted policy language regarding the use of artificial intelligence in our Plagiarism Policy 5701, in 2023. This guidance has since been expanded and standardized into Policy 2365.”
The new policy cautions that “AI tools are not inherently knowledgeable and are trained from large amounts of data collected from various sources” and can be “inaccurate, inappropriate, or incomplete.”
“Therefore, to ensure the responsible use of AI and to maintain academic integrity, students shall be required to comply with the District’s Acceptable Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence Plan (AI Plan) that will include proper citation and/or documentation methods to support the content provided by an AI tool in a student assignment.”
According to the policy, the Superintendent (or designee) may designate an AI Coordinator to oversee the use of all AI tools in the district and may designate additional AI Coordinators and/or committees to monitor the use of all AI tools within the District.
The Superintendent or designee, in consultation with staff, teachers, leadership, students and the AI Coordinator(s), shall develop the district’s AI Plan, which will address prohibited uses, including using AI in a way that falsely represents the assignment as the student’s own; using AI to purposefully create misinformation or to misrepresent others with the intent of harming, bullying or intimidating anyone.
“This new policy does not outright prohibit the use of these services, but instead provides a framework for the District to regulate when students may be permitted to use these tools in their classwork,” DuVall Wilson said. “The policy requires the District to develop an AI Plan that will provide teachers the tools they need to either restrict or permit responsible use of AI in their class.”
DuVall Wilson said the Board anticipates policy language soon being developed to regulate teacher and staff use of AI tools, including in classroom instruction, development of curriculum and materials, and assessment of student work.
See a pdf of the policy is below:
