Monroe Township Public Schools

Guidance on the Use of Artificial Intelligence

Guidance on the Use of AI for Monroe Township Public Schools

Table of Contents

1. Purpose
2. Scope
3. Guiding Principles for AI Use
4. Responsible Use of AI Tools
5. Prohibited Use of AI Tools
6. Special Consideration: Advancing Academic Integrity
7. Special Consideration: Safety, Security, Privacy
8. Review

This document is adapted from the AI Guidance for Schools Toolkit (see citation).

Purpose

This document guides our students, staff, and school communities on the appropriate and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI tools, in classroom instruction, school management, and systemwide operations. Generative AI has potential benefits for education and risks that must be thoughtfully managed.

Artificial intelligence refers to computer systems that are taught to automate tasks normally requiring human intelligence. "Generative AI" refers to tools, such as Magic School/Student, School AI, Bing Chat, ChatGPT, Mid-Journey, and Dall-E, that can produce new content, such as text, images, or music, based on patterns they've learned from their training data.^[1] This is made possible through "machine learning," a subset of AI where computers learn from data without being explicitly programmed for a specific task. Think of it as teaching a computer to be creative based on examples it has seen. While generative AI tools show great promise and often make useful suggestions, they are designed to predict what is right, which isn't always right. As a result, their output can be inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete.

Scope

This guidance applies to all students, teachers, staff, administrators, and third parties who develop, implement, or interact with AI technologies used in our education system. It covers all AI systems used for education, administration, and operations, including, but not limited to, generative AI models, intelligent tutoring systems, conversational agents, automation software, and analytics tools. This guidance complements existing policies on technology use, data protection, academic integrity, and student support.

Guiding Principles for AI Use

The following principles guide the appropriate and safe use of AI and address current and future educational goals, teacher and student agency, academic integrity, and security. Monroe Township Public Schools commits to adopting internal procedures to operationalize each principle.

1. We use AI to help all of our students achieve their educational goals. We will use AI to help us reach our community’s goals, including improving student learning, teacher effectiveness, and school operations. We aim to make AI resources universally accessible, focusing especially on bridging the digital divide among students and staff. We are committed to evaluating AI tools for biases and ethical concerns, ensuring they effectively serve our diverse educational community.

2. We reaffirm adherence to existing policies and regulations. AI is one of many technologies used in our schools, and its use will align with existing regulations to protect student privacy, ensure accessibility to those with disabilities, and protect against harmful content. We will not share personally identifiable information with consumer-based AI systems. We will thoroughly evaluate existing and future technologies and address any gaps in compliance that might arise.

3. We educate our staff and students about AI. Promoting AI literacy among students and staff is central to addressing the risks of AI use and teaches critical skills for students’ futures. Students and staff will be given support to develop their AI literacy, which includes how to use AI, when to use it, and how it works, including foundational concepts of computer science and other disciplines. We will support teachers in adapting instruction in a context where some or all students have access to generative AI tools.

4. We explore the opportunities of AI and address the risks. In continuing to guide our community, we will work to realize the benefits of AI in education, address risks associated with using AI, and evaluate if and when to use AI tools, paying special attention to misinformation and bias.

5. We use AI to advance academic integrity. Honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility continue to be expectations for both students and teachers. Students should be truthful in giving credit to sources and tools and honest in presenting work that is genuinely their own for evaluation and feedback.

6. We maintain student and teacher agency when using AI tools. AI tools can provide recommendations or enhance decision-making, but staff and students will serve as “critical consumers” of AI and lead any organizational and academic decisions and changes. People will be responsible and accountable for pedagogical or decision-making processes where AI systems may inform decision-making.

7. We commit to auditing, monitoring, and evaluating our school’s use of AI. Understanding that AI and technologies are evolving rapidly, we commit to frequent and regular reviews and updates of our policies, procedures, and practices.

Responsible Use of AI Tools

Monroe Township Public Schools recognizes that responsible uses of AI will vary depending on the context, such as a classroom activity or assignment. Caution should be used when asking students to utilize AI tools that are not district-approved. The district-approved AI tools for students are MagicStudent and SchoolAI.  If a teacher requires students to use third-party AI tools, the teacher is responsible for acquiring parental permission, including the terms of use and privacy policies for that specific tool. Teachers will clarify if, when, and how AI tools will be used, with input from students and families, while the school system will ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations regarding data security and privacy.

All staff, students, and guests are bound to the standards of use in our existing AUP. Below are some examples of responsible uses that serve educational goals.

Student Learning

• Aiding Creativity: Students can harness generative AI to spark creativity across diverse subjects, including writing, visual arts, and music composition.
• Collaboration: Generative AI tools can partner with students in group projects by contributing concepts, supplying research support, and identifying relationships between varied information.
• Communication: AI can offer students real-time translation, personalized language exercises, and interactive dialogue simulations.
• Content Creation and Enhancement: AI can help generate personalized study materials, summaries, quizzes, and visual aids, help students organize thoughts and content, and help review content.
• Tutoring: AI technologies have the potential to democratize one-to-one tutoring and support, making personalized learning more accessible to a broader range of students. AI-powered virtual teaching assistants may provide non-stop support, answer questions, help with homework, and supplement classroom instruction.

Teacher Support

• Assessment Design and Analysis: In addition to enhancing assessment design by creating questions and providing standardized feedback on common mistakes, AI can conduct diagnostic assessments to identify gaps in knowledge or skills and enable rich performance assessments. Teachers will ultimately be responsible for evaluation, feedback, and grading, including determining and assessing the usefulness of AI in supporting their grading work. AI will not be solely responsible for grading. 
• Content Development and Enhancement for Differentiation: AI can assist educators by differentiating curricula, suggesting lesson plans, generating diagrams and charts, and customizing independent practice based on student needs and proficiency levels.
• Continuous Professional Development: AI can guide educators by recommending teaching and learning strategies based on student needs, personalizing professional development to teachers’ needs and interests, suggesting collaborative projects between subjects or teachers, and offering simulation-based training scenarios such as teaching a lesson or managing a parent/teacher conference.
• Research and Resource Compilation: AI can help educators by recommending books or articles relevant to a lesson and updating teachers on teaching techniques, research, and methods.  

School Management and Operations

• Communications: AI tools can help draft and refine communications within the school community, deploy chatbots for routine inquiries, and provide instant language translation.
• Operational Efficiency: Staff can use AI tools to support school operations and streamline administrative processes, including scheduling courses, automating inventory management, increasing energy savings, and generating performance reports.
• Learning Management Systems (LMS): AI can analyze student performance data to provide insights to educators, helping them tailor instruction or interventions.

The New Jersey Department of Education's artificial intelligence guidance can be found here.

Prohibited Use of AI Tools

As we work to realize the benefits of AI in education, we also recognize that risks must be addressed. Below are the prohibited uses of AI tools and the measures we will take to mitigate the associated risks. Student use of AI tools in a prohibited manner can be subject to disciplinary action per the student code of conduct.

Student Learning

• Bullying/harassment: Using AI tools to manipulate media to impersonate others for bullying, harassment, or any form of intimidation is strictly prohibited. All users are expected to employ these tools solely for educational purposes, upholding values of respect, inclusivity, and academic integrity at all times.
• Overreliance: Dependence on AI tools can decrease human discretion and oversight. Important nuances and context can be overlooked and accepted. Teachers will clarify if, when, and how AI tools should be used in their classrooms, and teachers and students are expected to review outputs generated by AI before use.
• Plagiarism and cheating: Students and staff should not copy from any source, including generative AI, without prior approval and adequate documentation. Students should not submit AI-generated work as their original work. Students may not represent any AI output as human-generated. Staff and students will be taught how to properly cite or acknowledge the use of AI where applicable.

Teachers will be clear about when and how AI tools may be used to complete assignments and restructure assignments to reduce opportunities for plagiarism by requiring personal context, original arguments, or original data collection. The district’s plagiarism policy can be found here.

• Unequal access: If an assignment permits the use of AI tools, the tools will be made available to all students, considering that some may already have access to such resources outside of school.

Teacher Support

• Societal Bias: AI tools trained on human data will inherently reflect societal biases in the data. Risks include reinforcing stereotypes, recommending inappropriate educational interventions, or making discriminatory evaluations, such as falsely reporting plagiarism by non-native English speakers.
• Diminishing student and teacher agency and accountability: While generative AI presents useful assistance to amplify teachers' capabilities and reduce teacher workload, these technologies will not be used to supplant the role of human educators in instructing and nurturing students. The core practices of teaching, mentoring, assessing, and inspiring learners will remain the teacher's responsibility in the classroom. AI is a tool to augment human judgment, not replace it. Teachers and staff must review and critically reflect on all AI-generated content before use, thereby keeping “humans in the loop.”^[2] 
• Privacy concerns: AI tools will not be used to monitor classrooms for accountability purposes, such as analyzing teacher-student interactions or tracking teacher movements, which can infringe on students’ and teachers' privacy rights and create a surveillance culture.

School Management and Operations

• Compromising Privacy: Monroe Township Public Schools will not use AI in ways that compromise teacher or student privacy or lead to unauthorized data collection, as this violates privacy laws and our system’s ethical principles. See the Security, Privacy, and Safety section below for more information.
• Noncompliance with Existing Policies: We will evaluate AI tools for compliance with all relevant policies and regulations, such as privacy laws and ethical principles. AI tools will be required to detail if/how personal information is used to ensure that personal data remains confidential and isn't misused.

Special Consideration: Advancing Academic Integrity 

While it is necessary to address plagiarism and other risks to academic integrity, we will use AI to advance the fundamental values of academic integrity - honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility.^[3] 

• Staff and students can use AI tools to quickly cross-reference information and claims, though they must still be critical of the output.
• Advanced AI tools can increase fairness by identifying and minimizing biases in grading and assessments.
• AI can adapt materials for students with different learning needs, showing respect for individual differences.

Additional Recommendations for Advancing Academic Integrity

• Teachers might allow the limited use of generative AI on specific assignments or parts of assignments and articulate why they do not allow its use in other assignments.
• Teachers will not use technologies that purport to identify the use of generative AI to detect cheating and plagiarism, as their accuracy is questionable.
• If a teacher or student uses an AI system, its use must be disclosed and explained. As part of the disclosure, students may choose to cite their use of an AI system using one of the following resources:  

• MLA Style - Generative AI
• APA Style - ChatGPT
• Chicago Style - Generative AI

The district’s plagiarism policy can be found here. AI tools may be used for brainstorming or preliminary research, but using AI to generate answers or complete assignments without proper citation or passing off AI-generated content as one’s own is considered plagiarism.

Special Consideration: Security, Privacy, and Safety

We will implement reasonable security measures to secure AI technologies against unauthorized access and misuse. All AI systems deployed within the school will be evaluated for compliance with relevant laws and regulations, including those related to data protection, privacy, and students’ online safety. For example, providers will make it clear when a user is interacting with an AI versus a human. 

Staff and students are prohibited from entering confidential or personally identifiable information into unauthorized AI tools, such as those without approved data privacy agreements. Sharing confidential or personal data with an AI system could violate privacy if not properly disclosed and consented to.

Review

This guidance will be reviewed regularly to ensure it continues to meet the district’s needs and complies with changes in laws, regulations, and technology.

[Last updated: 10/03/24]