Rules and Guidelines

Page contents

Rules and Guidelines for Student Use of GenAI 

WUR's Rules and Guidelines for Student Use of GenAI break down acceptable AI usage by 5 main principles:

  1. Always check your course guide in Brightspace
  2. Use GenAI to enhance, not replace, your academic skills
  3. Maintain academic integrity and be transparent
  4. Use GenAI tools consciously and critically
  5. Mind your data security

For a more detailed explanation of these principles, you can consult the full Rules and Guidelines document via the link below.

attachment Rules and guidelines for student use of GenAI 2025-2026.pdf

Rules set by the Examining Boards

Unless you have explicit permission from an examiner as written in the course guide, using AI to generate ready-made AI content for your assignment is considered fraud (Article 16, paragraph 3 of the 2025-2026 Rules & Regulations). Examiners can request an additional oral verification of your assignment in case of doubt. Suspicions of AI fraud will be investigated by the Examining Boards in a similar way as they investigate plagiarism. Besides prohibiting this specific usage of AI tools, the Examining Boards stress a few important points.

  • First, you may use AI only to support essential academic skills like critical reflection, literature research, and scientific writing, not to replace those skills.
  • You are always held accountable for the correctness, completeness, and coherence of your (written) assignments.
  • When using AI in an assignment, you should acknowledge this usage and reflect on how it impacts your assignment. See “How do I use (generative) AI responsibly?” for more information on how to cite AI tools in your academic texts.

If you have questions about these rules, contact your course coordinator or email us at [email protected].

Ready-made AI content

Ready-made AI content is a text, image, video, audio, or other form of output generated by a (generative) AI model without significant original contribution from the student and/or has been used to replace the work of a student for an assignment.

Guidelines for MSc Theses

The use of AI in MSc theses is subject to certain conditions. Part A of the  MSc Thesis Course Guidelines discusses five use cases in which it is, in principle, allowed:

  • Sparring partner/Brainstorming

  • Feedback tool for textual improvement (e.g. spelling/grammar checking)

  • Data processing script development (coding)

  • Literature searching

  • Transcription

There are, however, some conditions that apply:

  • Acquiring skills relevant to the thesis, such as active writing, designing, and reflection skills, are an important part of your learning objective. The use of AI may only be in support of the development of these skills and not a replacement of these skills.

  • You will always be held accountable for the correctness, completeness, and coherence of all your texts. AI models can misinterpret information, introduce or amplify biases, or introduce false or unsubstantiated information. You should always critically evaluate the output. Don’t let an AI perform the work for you, but ask it for suggestions and weigh them critically.

  • When you use AI for your work, acknowledge and/or document the usage of AI on your products. See this Support Page for more information.

  • Never put (personal) data of others, information that infringes on intellectual property rights or sensitive or confidential (research) data into external/commercial AI tools.

  • Be aware of institutional policies regarding data usage. Some databases, chair groups, internship companies, etc., might not allow you to share their data with AI tools, as this may violate agreements with financiers of projects or may even violate intellectual property rights (IPs). For more information, see: Personal data protection regulations WUR and Data policy
    at WUR.

  • Always respect copyright laws and the intellectual property rights of others. Do not upload materials that are copyright-protected in an AI tool, this can have severe consequences.

  • When applying AI for literature searching you use it as a supplementation or extension of existing conventional search methods (e.g. keyword-based searching via the WUR Library or
    Google Scholar), and not as a replacement of these methods. Use specialised programs for literature searches and creating a list of references, as multipurpose generative AI models
    may generate (i.e. make up) references.

  • Using AI to write code / scripts may only be done if you can explain and verify the accuracy and validity of the code.

Edited from the 2025-2026 version of the MSc Thesis Course Guideline