Give students a form to fill in and they will tell you exactly which tools they used. Do not give them a form and you will get a guess about what you wanted to hear. The template below is that form.
What a declaration is
A student declaration is a short block a student attaches to a submitted artifact (an essay, a lab writeup, a slide deck, a code file) that lists every non-trivial tool used, how it was used, and what the student did with the output. It is the student-facing sibling of the AI-authorship fence in the classroom. The fence is on the artifact. The declaration is the student's own signed line beneath it.
The declaration is a configuration choice: a small template you print on the assignment sheet or paste into the LMS submission field (Class C). Its pedagogical warrant is the same as the fence: legibility beats prohibition, and disclosed help is inspectable help (Class E, in the sense used by Parr, Pezzulo, and Friston, 2022, where unmodeled causes distort inference across a shared generative model).
The template
Copy this block onto the last page or last field of any assignment where tools were plausibly used.
STUDENT DECLARATION
Name:
Assignment:
Date:
Tools I used on this work (list every one, including search engines,
chatbots, calculators, translators, spell-check, grammar assistants,
graphing tools, and any classmate or adult who reviewed a draft):
1. Tool:
How I used it (one sentence):
What I did with the output (kept / edited / rewrote / rejected):
2. Tool:
How I used it:
What I did with the output:
3. Tool:
How I used it:
What I did with the output:
The sentences and reasoning in this work are mine except where I have
marked otherwise inside the text.
Signature:
Three rows is usually enough. Add rows if the assignment invites more. The signature line is not decorative: it converts the declaration from a checklist into a claim the student is making about their own work.
Worked examples
Three declarations from real-shaped assignments, rewritten for print.
Example one: a history essay on the Marshall Plan.
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Tool: school library database (JSTOR). How I used it: searched three articles on the Marshall Plan and read the abstracts. What I did with the output: took two direct quotes and cited both; paraphrased one paragraph.
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Tool: a chatbot. How I used it: asked it to summarize the difference between "aid" and "loan" in postwar economics. What I did with the output: rewrote the summary in my own words after checking one of the textbook definitions against it. Did not quote the chatbot.
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Tool: a classmate. How I used it: she read my draft and told me the second paragraph did not follow the first. What I did with the output: I rewrote the second paragraph.
Example two: a physics lab writeup.
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Tool: graphing calculator. How I used it: computed the linear regression on my velocity data. What I did with the output: kept the slope and intercept; wrote the interpretation myself.
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Tool: a chatbot. How I used it: asked what units the slope should be in. What I did with the output: verified the answer against my textbook, then wrote it in my own words.
Example three: a Spanish essay.
- Tool: an online translator. How I used it: checked three verb conjugations I was not sure of. What I did with the output: kept two, rejected one because the translator gave a formal form and the assignment was informal.
Notice what these examples share. Each tool has a specific job. Each output has a specific fate. Nothing is vague, and nothing hides behind "I looked things up."
How to introduce it without drama
Print the declaration on the assignment sheet from the beginning of the term. Do not roll it out mid-year with a speech. It is a form, like the header block. Read one aloud together on the first week, ask the class what a good declaration would look like for that particular assignment, and move on. Grade the declaration only for completeness, not for the tool choices themselves, unless the assignment specifically restricts tools. That way honest declarations of tool use never carry a grade penalty, which is the entire behavioral bet.
For the underlying skill of naming and evaluating sources, pair this with how to teach source hygiene. For the reasoning behind the whole practice, see honesty in classrooms: the AI-authorship fence.
The declaration is small. That is the point. UNI, the working hypothesis we teach here, is on an attainable path toward General Natural Intelligence, natural not artificial: a science-in-the-open practice whose classroom face is a short honest form, not a slogan.