Merion Mercy Academy Generative AI Guidelines — Flint AI Policy Library

MMA Generative AI Guidelines

MMA recognizes the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in enhancing student and teacher learning and teaching, and the importance of avoiding the pitfalls of using AI as a shortcut or substitute for deeper learning.

Proper Use of AI

Improper Use of AI

General Practices

Unless otherwise directed, all submitted work must be composed entirely in a Google Doc that is shared with the teacher. This avoids the ambiguity of large sections of copy/pasted work and allows the teacher to understand the writing process as much as the final product. Students may not use tools like Grammarly. The comprehensive generative composition suggestions from tools like Grammarly can result in inauthentic representations of students’ understanding, original ideas, and ability. At the teacher’s direction, tools like Flint which allow students to easily share how they used AI, may be used in conjunction with Google Docs.

https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai/ https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/how-to-cite-chatgpt

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Students are Encouraged to Use AI Responsibly

Learning to leverage AI effectively and ethically is a modern literacy. Students should identify any writing, text, or media generated by AI, and are responsible for verifying the accuracy of the generated content. Failure to acknowledge the AI-generated contributions will be treated as a violation of the academic integrity policy. Personal or confidential information must never be entered into AI tools (using your name and email to sign up for an AI tool is acceptable, but never give information like a street address, social security number, etc. into an AI prompt). Your teachers will describe if/how they would like you to use AI for a given assignment. If you are uncertain if the use of AI is acceptable, ask your teacher first.

Ethical use of AI

Students are expected to act ethically in the use and application of AI. They should not use AI in harmful, discriminatory, or misleading acts or processes. Since AI results may include hallucinations (errors), users are expected to verify content elsewhere so that false information is not spread. Teachers and students should acknowledge, attribute or cite AI when used in any aspect of teaching and learning. Use these guidelines when citing how you used AI: MLA and APA. Again, the acceptable use of AI will be clearly outlined and determined by the teacher.

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PromptCraft

Also known as question engineering, question design, or prompt engineering is the process of carefully crafting queries or prompts to draw the desired information or response from an AI tool. This requires the user to understand the capabilities and limitations of an AI tool and formulate questions that are clear, concise, and specific. It should be very clearly stated to students that no personal data or information should be entered into the AI tool to generate content.

Refining of questions allows users to improve the accuracy and relevance of the AI-generated responses. The process of experimentation with different phrases, providing additional context, or using specific formatting to achieve the desired outcome. Effective question engineering is a transferable skill necessary for students to learn with and without AI tools. The following CREATE framework is useful for PromptCraft:

This set of gen AI guidelines from Merion Mercy Academy outlines proper and improper use of AI as well as a framework for crafting effective prompts. Merion Mercy's teachers are diving all-in on using AI for writing feedback through Flint's activities and are setting up project workflows to train and demonstrate to students how to responsibly leverage the power of AI.

Their Assistant Head of School for Academics, Philip Vinogradov, also wished to disclose:
"In the 6 months following the emergence of ChatGPT many schools were sharing their emerging policies. A great deal of our policy was inspired by the work of other, with whole sections borrowed, modified, and incorporated. Untangling original sources may not be possible, but it is important to note the collective efforts of educators who were willing to share ideas with the whole community.

The create acronym comes directed from the work of Tom Barrett."

"Last spring, we said that AI is a tool that students will never be without for the rest of their lives. They're only going to be surrounded by more and more powerful versions. The new digital divide will not be about access—it's going to be about who knows how to use these tools effectively and responsibly and who doesn't. We can put up all the firewalls we want, and water will always find a way. So, our best approach is a holistic and constructive approach based in ethics and citizenship. And so we developed our policy. It leads with a simple set of principles. When you're uncertain if it's okay to use AI, ask the teacher. And then, your responsibility is to share with the teacher how you used AI, and Flint makes sharing that chat very easy."

Read more in this case study.

Philip Vinogradov

Merion Mercy Academy • Assistant Head of School for Academics