AI Policy

Though we recognize that generative AI is a powerful tool that can help humans write more efficiently, the Center for Writing and Speaking is concerned about the use of AI to generate or assist with writing in the context of a liberal arts education. If AI replaces student critical thinking, then its use for academic assignments may conflict with the CWS’s mission to “focus…on collaboration, fostering critical thinking, and emphasizing ownership of [student] work” as well as with the mission of Agnes Scott College to educate its students “to think deeply, live honorably and engage the intellectual and social challenges of their times.”

We recognize, however, that with increasing ubiquity of generative AI in academia and professional workplaces, some ASC assignments may allow or require students to use it. We encourage CWS tutors to tutor these assignments as they would any other writing or speaking assignment. Tutors will not criticize tutees for using generative AI, though they may speak to them about the technology’s drawbacks. Tutees, however, must disclose their use of AI prior to their appointment and share their professor’s AI policy. If a tutee’s use of AI is inconsistent with their professor’s policy, CWS tutors will not tutor the assignment.

When tutoring assignments for which generative AI use is permissible, CWS tutors may choose to use the technology so long as their use is consistent with the college’s AI Use Policy for Employees, which emphasizes transparency, accountability, equity and inclusion, data privacy, integrity, and environmental responsibility. That said, we discourage tutors from using AI during appointments for the same reasons we discourage students from using the technology to generate writing or ideas for their writing and speaking assignments: doing so may shortcut learning and thus diminish students’ agency.