This handbook is a general, get-started guide consolidating information for administrators, faculty, and staff to reference while developing your own custom GPTs. With funding from an Oliver Innovation Fund, the AI at AU taskforce has invested in a limited number of OpenAI’s Chat GPT Team Accounts. Watch this video for a quick introduction to your AU-Supported ChatGPT Teams Licence.
The full statement for AI use in Coursework, including Syllabus Policy Statement Options is available at the AI @ AU Policy page on the Mikkelsen Library website. AI at AU Position and Mission statements are listed for your reference below.
Augustana University supports the responsible exploration and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools within our academic and administrative environments. As we integrate these technologies, Augustana is focused on data privacy, information security, compliance with legal standards, respect for copyright, and the preservation of academic integrity. By focusing on these considerations, Augustana University aims to create a safe and supportive environment where both students and employees can leverage AI technology to enhance their educational and professional journeys while maintaining our institutional values.
The AI @ AU Task Force leads the responsible exploration and integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies within academic and administrative settings. We ensure the ethical use of AI by prioritizing data privacy, information security, legal compliance, intellectual property, and academic integrity. Our mission is to equip students, faculty, and staff to engage with AI tools in ways that enrich learning, innovation, and professional development, in alignment with Augustana's core values.
OpenAI Team comes with significantly more privacy controls than the publicly available ChatGPT. Anything that you submit to the public version of ChatGPT can be used to train further models unless you explicitly opt-out. Content submitted to Augustana’s ChatGPT Team accounts are never used to train OpenAI’s models.
Currently, you can visit OpenAI’s privacy policies to “Make a Privacy Request” and fill out the corresponding form “Do not train on my content” to ask OpenAI not to use content that you provide to ChatGPT going forward. Always refer to the official privacy policy of the AI models that you use for full and accurate information.
At time of writing, these accounts provide access to OpenAI’s o1 model, which is a ‘reasoning model’ that is designed to ‘reason through’ a series of steps before replying to a prompt, rather than replying to a prompt as quickly as possible. This ‘chain-of-thought reasoning’ is designed to improve accuracy of model outputs by working step-by-step through complex prompts.
A Custom GPT is a GPT that is designed to perform a specific task based on a specific set of pre-defined instructions and data.
These are some ways that Custom GPTs have been used on the Augustana campus so far.
Campus-wide course renumbering
Designing a syllabus
Meeting minute aggregation generated from meeting transcripts
Creating summaries of material at different levels (lay person, college sophomore, etc)
The AI @ AU Taskforce has created a CustomGPT trainer for you! Follow along with the steps in this scribehow tutorial and with this video tutorial from Pete Folliard.
You have been given access to a shared ChatGPT Team Account that is specific to your department and/or affiliation. yourdepartment.gpt@augie.edu.
Note that this account and associated information is shared with members of your department.
We recommend that you use the projects feature to ensure all YOUR work is in one place. You should NOT access project folders that are not your own.
The AI @ AU Taskforce recommends following the Harvard guidelines for data security and privacy, linked for you at the AI @ AU Policy page on the Mikkelsen Library website.
DO NOT upload any financial, or sensitive personally identifying information
DO NOT upload any documents or data that you would not be okay with your colleagues seeing (since these are shared accounts)
You CAN upload FERPA protected data
You CAN upload student assignments
DO NOT upload any financial, or sensitive personally identifying information
DO NOT upload any FERPA-protected data
DO NOT upload student assignments unless you have ChatGPT+ or higher account
Personal accounts, such as the Free GPT or GPT Pro licence that you sign up for individually with your @augie.edu email address.
GPT Business/Teams/Enterprise accounts that are provided to you by your institution. AU has ChatGPT Teams accounts, which contain higher privacy and safety protections. Further, OpenAI does not use any data uploaded to these accounts to train future models.
Last Updated Feb 02, 2025