Faculty Quotations on Students Using AI
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Introduction
The selected quotations on this page arise from a faculty survey on allowing students to use generative artificial intelligence (AI) to write about technical content [1]. Responding to the survey 100 faculty members representing more than 40 colleges across the United States and Canada. These instructors fall into three groups: faculty from the humanities who are teaching a technical writing course; writing faculty situated in an engineering or science college; and engineering or science faculty teaching a writing-component course. All these faculty teach a significant number of students from engineering or science. The faculty quotations appear in a blue-to-green spectrum in which blue quotations lean toward not allowing students to use AI, while green lean quotations toward allowing students to use AI. Quotations that reside in the middle are given in purple. Quotations "I think my role is to help students develop their own expert knowledge. Extending that cognition to AI short-circuits their own developmental process." Writing Faculty Member in Engineering "Similar to how I allow myself to use AI, I allow students to use AI for grammar checks, gathering ideas (with human validation), and suggestions on writing tone, as long as the ideas are originally theirs." Faculty Member, Mechanical Engineering "Drafting with AI is something I highly discourage, but I also recognize that their future colleagues are doing so." Faculty Member, Humanities "I specifically limit or prohibit [AI] activities that would result in meaningful cognitive offloading. Because teaching responsible and ethical use of AI is a daunting task, I feel more comfortable with a blanket restriction." Faculty Member, Humanities "My policy is that students can use AI if they ask me in advance, and if they document the AI program in the Works Cited." Faculty Member, English "I have prohibited all use of generative AI (with the sole exception of certain citation generators) to ensure students are actually putting in the necessary hard work to learn a new skill. If they just have the AI do it for them, then they will not learn (or will lose, if they have already learned) the skills necessary for ideating, drafting, and revising." Faculty Member, English "I suggest Elicit to students for asking research questions and finding sources. I use this platform myself. Unlike ChatGPT and Claude, Elicit does not hallucinate sources." Writing Faculty Member in Engineering "If students want to use AI more extensively than I have stated, they need to explain and justify that use. Overall, my policy is still a work in progress." Faculty Member, Humanities |
Quotations (Continued)
"The course I teach is often the singular writing course students must take at my institution. I ban AI in my course because (a) I can't sign off on the student's ability to write and communicate clearly if they did not do the work themselves, and (b) students at this stage generally do not have the writing or communication knowledge to evaluate AI output in a meaningful way." Faculty Member, Humanities "I allow students to use GenAI without hard restrictions because I don't think it makes sense to pretend writing is ever "purely human" or tool-free. My focus is on how the students use it: Are they outsourcing the parts of the work where they actually need to think and make judgments, or are they using it to reduce unnecessary friction so they can spend more time on higher-level decisions? I ask students to document their workflows and take intellectual responsibility for anything submitted under their name, but I don't ban tools that are rapidly becoming part of real-world writing practices." Faculty Member, Humanities "My stance is that 'If GenAI can do it, [students] won't be doing it in the future.' Students need to focus on developing higher-order skills like innovation, critical thinking, narrative, debate, and empathy if they are going to stay competitive for careers. We need to teach students to do things GenAI can't do." Faculty Member, English "As someone who wants human beings--and especially those in STEM fields--to do and develop their own thinking, I tend to focus on the pedagogical negatives of using AI in technical writing. I especially draw attention to the problem of AI hallucinations: false content and false citations." Faculty Member, Technical Communication Program "Using AI tools to enhance writing will equip students to function in professional settings, most of which have adopted AI tools in engineering practice." Faculty Member, Mechanical Engineering Faculty "Although I would much prefer my students not rely on AI to write, I don't think I can reliably tell whether they have, and don't believe in policies that I can enforce only arbitrarily." Writing Faculty Member in Engineering "No AI is allowed in my class under any circumstances." Faculty Member, English "Students are allowed to use AI freely as long as they cite AI use as well as make an AI statement at the beginning, explaining how they used AI." Faculty Member, English "My students are cautioned that basic GenAI models are terrible options for research. But students aren't forbidden from using AI for research--they're given information and expected to make an informed decision based on that information. The same is true for generating outlines and drafts." Faculty Member, Chemical Engineering |
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References
1. S. Cutler, M. Alley, S. Dory, and I. Osunbunmi, "National Survey of Faculty on Using AI in Technical Writing Assignments," Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education, Penn State (2026). |
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