Allowable AI Use
AI applications may be used to complement personal creativity. Students may use AI applications in the following circumstances:
- To brainstorm and generate ideas for assignment topics or components that students develop further through critical assessment and creativity.
- To edit written material using communication assistance programs like Grammarly.
- To supplement literature reviews using AI Research Assistants that search across a defined body of academic papers, like Elicit or Consensus.
- To create images for use within assignments using image-generating AI applications.
- To create slide shows for use within assignments using slide-generating AI applications like Canva.
Basic tools used to check grammar and spelling and to manage citations are allowed as they are not considered generative AI applications.
When AI applications are used to develop allowable content for DMSc assignments, students must disclose which AI applications were used, and if applicable, include a summary of the associated prompts (see “Disclosing AI Use” below for more information).
It is NOT permitted for students to use AI-generated content as a substitute for personally generated written content. In other words:
- Students are not permitted to use AI applications to generate written content to submit for credit for any assignments associated with DMSc degree completion.
- While students may use applications to edit written material, students may not use applications like Grammarly to paraphrase content created by others. For example, students may not copy a sentence from a publication and use Grammarly to paraphrase it. Students must competently paraphrase this type of material on their own.
Using AI-generated text within written assignments constitutes academic dishonesty and shall be considered plagiarism. The reason for this policy is as follows:
- Cultivating doctorate-level writing and critical analysis skills requires effort and practice. Replacing this effort with AI-generated content denies students the opportunity to develop and execute doctorate-level competencies.
- Individuals who take credit for the work of others demonstrate a lack of integrity. Integrity requires giving appropriate credit. AI-generated text commonly lacks reliable source information, making appropriate attribution of credit difficult and sometimes impossible.
- To maintain academic integrity, students may only claim credit for personally generated work and provide appropriate attribution for the products, work, ideas, or data created by others in accordance with the American Medical Association (AMA) Manual of Style.