Six AI Ground Rules to Write Together with Your Students

You can write NO AI USE across the board in big letters and the chatbots in your students' phones will not disappear. The limits of control alone are obvious. The rules students genuinely keep are not the ones imposed on them but the ones whose reasons they accepted for themselves. AI ground rules only come alive when you build them with students. The process itself also makes for an excellent ethics lesson. While students debate and wrestle with "why would this not be okay," they come to understand far more deeply than when a teacher tells them one-sidedly.

Where students get confused

Students cannot find their footing between "using AI is bad" and "it is convenient so anything goes." Leave that confusion in place and they either use it in secret while feeling guilty or copy from it without a second thought.

• The line between plagiarism and use: They do not know the difference between getting an idea and copying something whole.
• Responsibility for verification: They cannot judge whether it is okay to turn in an AI answer as is.
• A sense for personal information: They enter their own or a friend's information without thinking.

Have students set clear standards themselves and the confusion shrinks while a sense of responsibility grows.

Six example rules, built together

A class discussion can arrive at rules like the following. What is below is only an example; the real value lies in students rewriting them in their own words.

1. If I get help from AI, I say so honestly.
2. I always check an AI answer one more time.
3. I do not enter my name, my friends' information, or photos.
4. I do not use it on tests or graded writing.
5. I ask about what I do not know, but the thinking is mine.
6. If I get a strange or upsetting answer, I tell my teacher.

Good rules are not a list of "do not" but a promise of "let's do it this way."

Once the rules are set, post them at the back of the room and check in at a class meeting once a month on whether they held up and whether anything needs fixing. What keeps rules alive is repeated conversation. As new situations come up, add a line at a time so students never lose the sense that the rules are theirs.

Key takeaways

The power of student AI rules comes from "I made this rule." First, work through the places students get confused, such as plagiarism, verification, and personal information. Second, put them in the positive form of "let's do it this way" rather than prohibitions. Third, post them and check in regularly to keep them alive. The experience of keeping a rule you set yourself carries past AI into a lifetime of digital citizenship. Next period, try suggesting to your students that they write "our class's AI promises" themselves. Some odd suggestions will come up at first, but the process of debating with classmates and arriving at agreement is living civic education. A child who keeps a promise made with their own hands grows into an adult who follows rules because they believe they are right, not because someone made them.