Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the nature and work of teaching in higher education. Drawing from the Provost’s 2024-2025 AI Task Force Report, the following principles provide a guide for ethical, effective, and human-centered use of AI in teaching. They also reflect USC’s continued commitment to academic integrity, innovation, and providing students with high-quality and meaningful educational experiences.
Effective teaching still depends on faculty presence, expertise, and interaction with students. While AI tools can streamline and support certain instructional efforts, faculty should leverage their knowledge and judgment to determine whether, when, and how AI can best enrich student course experiences, critical thinking, and learning.
At a minimum, faculty must convey in their course syllabi what is allowed or prohibited, as well as any responsibilities students have for documenting their AI use. Given the varied types and ever-changing applications of AI, faculty should also encourage ongoing, context-specific, and frank conversations with students to provide necessary guidance and prevent confusion or misunderstanding.
Faculty can model self-reflective, responsible, and ethical AI practices for their students as well as their colleagues. If AI was used to develop course materials, create assessments, or generate feedback, faculty should be forthcoming and prepared to discuss the rationale, scope, and implications of its use. Transparency of this sort fosters trust and helps reinforce community norms about AI use.
AI tools are powerful but imperfect. They can introduce or be premised on errors, bias, and misinformation. Faculty should always review and edit AI outputs before sharing them with students or relying on them in teaching to ensure their accuracy, quality, and appropriateness.
Student work as well as personal and institutional data should never be uploaded into public AI tools, which may store or reuse this information. AI use also elicits a number of social, legal, and ethical questions for education, research, and the workplace worthy of consideration. University-approved AI tools satisfy privacy and security standards for faculty use, and the Garnet AI Foundry website maintains a current list of approved tools and integrations.
Rather than police and penalize AI use, help students develop AI literacy so they are equipped to scrutinize AI outputs, recognize potential errors or bias, and consider the appropriateness of AI within their disciplines and lives. AI detection tools are notoriously unreliable, and the insights and skills associated with AI literacy will help students use AI responsibly in their academic and future professional contexts.
By continuing to develop their own understanding of AI, faculty can better adapt their teaching and support their students. The Center for Teaching Excellence offers professional development resources and sponsors communities of practice for AI users across campus. Faculty should also explore opportunities for engagement through their professional associations as the possibilities, value, and implications of AI use vary across disciplines.
These guidelines provide a foundational framework for the appropriate use of AI in teaching at USC, recognizing that the technologies and considerations surrounding AI continue to evolve. Faculty and academic units are encouraged to adapt these guidelines to their particular circumstances and considerations. Indeed, regular engagement of this sort is an essential part of creating the shared community and culture within which AI can be thoughtfully and effectively used.