As of right now (summer 2024), Vassar College does not have an official blanket policy on generative AI usage for coursework. Instead, Vassar faculty members and departments have the ability to make tailored policies about AI for their courses. This means that what's permissible in one class might constitute a violation of the Academic Integrity policy in another class. Because of this, our biggest recommendation for deciding whether to use AI in a given assignment is to check the syllabus and course page on Moodle to familiarize yourself with the policy. If there isn't a policy on AI usage or if you have questions about it, talk to your professor.
The following is an excerpt from Going to the Source: A Guide to Academic Integrity and Attribution at Vassar College: "You can’t cut and paste from Wikipedia or a similar source and present it as your own work, even if no author is listed. The same is true for a graph, figure, or batch of computer code. The ideas you are taking aren’t yours." Though this guide does not include information about AI specifically, we (Vassar librarians) believe that the same principle applies—if you use generative AI on your assignments, it's important to be up-front about the fact that you're doing so. But what does this actually look like?
Scholars have different views about how you should disclose your AI usage. Because of this, it's still our top recommendation that you check in with your professor about their expectations and class policies.
If you choose to use ChatGPT or another generative AI tool to generate text for assignments, you can cite it as you would any other resource. For examples and guidelines, we recommend this guide to citing AI from the Brown University Library, which includes the guidelines for AI citations in APA, Chicago, and MLA.
However, some scholars disagree with the idea that generative AI should be cited like any other resource. This post on the blog Scholarly Kitchen by Leticia Antunes Nogueira and Jan Ove Rein, "The Case for Not Citing Chatbots as Information Sources," provides some interesting and thoughtful arguments against citing generative AI in research papers. As the authors write, there may be cases where it is more appropriate to develop alternate methods for acknowledging AI usage in academic writing, such as discussing it in the Methods section of your paper. If you use generative AI and you do not want to cite it in your list of references, you should a) find an alternate method of explaining how you used AI in your work, and b) check in with your professor to make sure this is in line with their policies.
We hope that the following tips will be helpful to you as you navigate decisions about using AI for academic work!
