“But I Didn’t Use ChatGPT!”: Democratic Course Design and Generative Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education Landscape

Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) has been in the news for the last several months, garnering attention for its supposed ability to replace human intelligence, with important implications for students and instructors in higher education. In this article, I propose a collaborative course design strategy to create a syllabus genAI use policy that is better equipped to handle the nuances of genAI use in higher education while also serving to democratize the classroom space in alignment with collaborative learning and teaching principles. I analyze the results of engaging this process over three consecutive semesters of sociology classes, including the created policies and my experiences enforcing them. Lastly, I reflect on how the activity changed as it was iterated on and how it might be adapted to alternate classroom contexts.