Using AI in Your Studies

Confirmed by the order of Vice-Rector for Studies no 3, 17.09.2026

Start with your assessment instructions

The rules for AI are set by your course. Read the syllabus and the assessment instructions before you use anything. Where the course rule is stricter, it applies. Every assessment should state its AI category. If none is stated, ask your instructor before you begin. Until you have an answer, the EBS default category ‘AI permitted’ applies: you may use AI, but you must declare how you used it, and the default does not authorise use that the assessment instructions turn out to prohibit.

If the course learning outcomes do not include the use of AI, there should always be a non-AI route of equal academic validity available which you may take without giving reasons.

Every assessment falls into one of three AI categories, stated in the syllabus or the assessment instructions.

What counts as AI

This guide covers generative AI: tools that produce text, code, images, data or analysis on request. That includes chatbots and assistants, AI features built into search engines, office software and the learning platform, and translation tools that rewrite as well as translate. It does not include spellcheckers, reference managers, calculators or statistical software. If you are unsure whether a tool counts, declare it and say what it did.

Choosing a tool

EBS provides no AI accounts to students. A task that expects AI must be doable with a tool that is free at the point of use. You will never be asked to pay for a subscription or to use one named product. Where a free tool requires an account, you may choose to create one, but you are never obliged to: the non-AI route is always open to you instead. If a free tool’s limits stop you from completing a task as instructed, tell your instructor before the deadline rather than paying for access.

Note that if the learning outcome of the course is the use of specific AI tool, the instructor may name it and require the students to sign up/register for it, but that information needs to be available prior to the start of the course.

Four things always, four things never

What you must declare

You declare substantive use: use that meaningfully shaped the content, method or results of your work, rather than basic editorial help. As a rule of thumb: if AI changed what you say, declare it; if it only changed how you spelled or punctuated it, you need not. Asking AI to tighten a paragraph you wrote is editorial; asking it to write the paragraph is substantive.

If you have not used AI in your work, you do not have to do a declaration of use.

A detector score is never the sole or decisive evidence of misconduct, and an investigation weighs your drafts, version history and your explanation. Course assessors maintain the right to use AI detectors and conduct further examinations, which may include an oral examination, if (1) substantive AI use is suspected and not declared, or if (2) individual learning outcomes have not been achieved due to the use of AI.

Where the line is

It is misconduct to:

• present AI-generated work as your own;
• submit AI-generated intellectual work where that is not authorised;
• let AI do the substantive intellectual task;
• fail to declare use that shaped your results;
• submit sources, quotations or data that do not exist; or
• use an AI agent in the learning platform, or to sit an examination, where that is not permitted.

An honest slip in declaring use should be treated as a chance to learn and correct, not as immediate misconduct.

Your work is graded by a person. EBS uses AI to assist on grading and feedback but not to do the grading, carry out examinations or provide any summative assessment.

At any stage you may decline a tool on ethical, privacy or environmental grounds and take the non-AI route set out at the start of this guide.

If you are unsure whether something is permitted, ask your instructor before you submit, not after. Suspected misconduct is handled under the EBS study regulations, which give you the right to explain your work and the right to appeal the outcome.

Using AI to help you with learning

Ask it to explain rather than to answer, then close it and explain the thing back in your own words. If you cannot, you have not learned it yet.

Treat every source it names as fabricated until you have checked it. EBS citation guidelines require you to have accessed and read any source you cite. Inventing citations is a known failure of these tools and submitting them is misconduct.

Notice when it is doing the thinking you are being assessed on. Unless your instructions permit it for that part, that is misconduct.

Language support, accessibility, tutoring and practice are legitimate uses unless your course rule says otherwise, for example translation in a language class should not be outsourced to AI.

Do not use AI in class activities, where discussion is the exercise’s objective and helps you achieve the individual learning outcomes.

Your declaration of AI use

A declaration is mandatory for every assessment in which you used AI, even where the instructions do not ask for it. Copy these fields or download the template, complete them, and attach the declaration to the work. Declaring AI use is not the same as citing a source: AI output is not a source, so do not list a tool in your references or quote it as evidence. Cite the primary sources you checked instead. In group work, the group submits one declaration covering every member’s use, and each member is responsible for the accuracy of what it states.

Version 1.0, approved 17.09.2026. Owner: Methods Lab. Questions about this guide: info@ebs.ee. Reviewed regularly.