Over the last few semesters, like so many of my colleagues in higher education, I have struggled with how to address generative AI in the classroom. Banning it entirely feels increasingly unrealistic, yet relying on unreliable AI detectors has only led to frustration for faculty and anxiety for students.

In search of a practical, constructive path forward, I began working on a two-way framework. Instructors can use it to clearly define if and how AI is permitted on a given assignment, and students (or authors of any paper) can use it to declare their actual AI usage honestly and transparently. Today, I’m sharing a proposal that I hope might be useful to our community: the Wandt AI Disclosure Label (WADL).

WADL is an open-source standard designed to move the conversation away from “detecting” AI and toward teaching accountability. It uses three simple scales to disclose:
1. Process (P): What phase of the workflow utilized AI (from ideation to substantive drafting).
2. Verification (V): How the student manually verified the facts and sources.
3. Record-keeping (R): What audit trail of prompts and outputs the student retained.

I am sharing this now because we are at a critical juncture in education. Faculty need clear, manageable policies, and students deserve a standardized, transparent way to show their work.

This standard is currently in beta, and it is very much a work in progress. I do not claim to have all the answers, and I am entirely open to changes, critiques, and improvements. As I prepare this framework for scholarly publication, I would love to invite a broader conversation with researchers, administrators, and instructors.

If you are teaching this coming Fall, I would be deeply grateful if you would consider trying WADL in your courses. Your real-world feedback on what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t, is exactly what is needed to make this framework better.

To make it as easy as possible to adopt, I have built a free tool at https://usewadl.org. The website helps both students build their labels and faculty generate syllabus statements and course policies. There is also a companion WADL Builder mobile app available on iOS to help students generate labels on the go.

If you have a few minutes, please take a look at usewadl.org. I welcome your thoughts, pushback, and suggestions in the comments or via direct message. Thank you for your time, and thank you for all you do for our students.

Please consider helping spread this message to more educators.