Keep a trail of your work

Why keep a trail

A trail is a record of how your work grew over time. If your instructor asks how you did an assignment, you can show them.

Tools that try to spot AI writing are sometimes wrong. Your trail shows how your work grew, and it helps you and your instructor talk about your process. Your trail also lets you say exactly how AI helped you.

You have Word, OneDrive, and OneNote for free through your college account. Go to office.com (opens in a new tab) and sign in with your college email address.

Write in Word, saved to OneDrive

Word keeps a dated history of your draft as you write.

1. Open Word and sign in with your college account.
2. Make a new document. Before you start writing, save the document to OneDrive. Give the document a name you'll recognize, like the course and the assignment.
3. Type your work in the document. Don't write somewhere else and paste finished text in at the end.
4. To see your history, go to File, then Info, then Version History.

Keep a OneNote notebook for each course

OneNote adds the date to every page, so your notes show when you did your work.

1. Open OneNote and sign in with your college account.
2. Make one notebook for each course this semester. Name the notebook after the course.
3. Add a section for each assignment.
4. As you work, save your notes, links to your sources, and your ideas. You can also add photos of handwritten brainstorming or whiteboard work.

Write down how you use AI

Each time you use Copilot or another AI tool for an assignment, add a page to the assignment's OneNote section. Paste in your question and the part of AI's answer you used. Then write a short note about what you kept, changed, or left out, and why.

That note is the start of what you tell your instructor before you turn in your work.