The Columbus City Schools' Board of Education will vote on whether to adopt a new artificial intelligence use policy for teachers, staff and students at a board meeting Tuesday evening.
Ohio's largest school district aims to keep people at the core of every AI-related decision while giving teachers discretion on whether or not to allow AI use by students on assignments. The policy states AI is a tool to support learning and teaching and isn't a substitute for student effort or the role of an educator.
The district has been considering the policy for almost a year and also got guidance from the state of Ohio before finalizing the policy being voted on Tuesday.
The district's Chief of Information Technology Christopher Lockhart said teachers will be the "guiding force" on whether or not students can use AI with particular assignments.
"We leave (teachers) with that control where they can say 'Okay, you can use AI maybe for brainstorming for this,' or 'You can you use AI to review your document once it's created,' or it could be 'Here's the challenge, use whatever tools are available to you — approved tools — to get the answer,'" Lockhart said.
Lockhart explained that some teachers are still AI skeptics and may not allow its use at all while others are AI advocates. He said the district is providing professional development and the tools and guidance that all teachers need and those who are not comfortable with AI have a path that they can walk to become more comfortable with the technology.
The largest section of the policy focuses on "acceptable use" of the technology. The sections outline how students should receive age-appropriate instruction about responsible AI use, digital citizenship, privacy and the risks/limitations of AI.
"Students are expected to develop their own knowledge, skills and understanding of course material rather than relying solely on AI tools, and they should ask their teacher(s) when they have questions and/or need assistance," the policy states.
The policy document also has a section on academic integrity. This section explains that the district will specify procedures for investigating and addressing suspected misuse in alignment with existing academic integrity policies.
It states a student’s unauthorized use of AI tools will be considered a form of plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration or misrepresentation of AI-generated content as original work, and any student found using these tools without permission or in a prohibited manner may be disciplined in accordance with the student code of conduct.
Lockhart said rules around AI use and whether it's acceptable will have to evolve and change as the technology, which he calls "disruptive" also changes.
"We're in a disruptive period with AI. And so we're still understanding what that looks like as far as dealing with students that are using tools that maybe don't even exist as of today," Lockhart said.
Another section of the policy addresses "non academic" uses of AI, like the creation of fake images imitating other students, staff or faculty. Lockhart said this section was based on the model policy created by the Ohio Department of Education.
The policy bars students and staff from using AI to generate false or knowingly misleading representations of other students, staff, volunteers or board members that are reasonably interpreted as derogatory, threatening or otherwise objectionable to a reasonable person. This includes visual or verbal depictions of these individuals or if a student or staff member circulates such a depiction on social media.
Lockhart said the policy also outlines restrictions on which AI platforms can be used and protections to shield the data of students and staff from being used to train AI models.
