Academic Integrity can be defined as an expectation of faculty, staff, students, and all members of the academic community to act with honesty, respect, fairness, trust, and responsibility. At Methodist College, we hold out students to the highest level of academic integrity. Breaches of academic integrity are known as academic dishonesty or misconduct. For more information on Methodist College's academic integrity policies, please refer to the Student Handbook.
In order to maintain academic integrity using GenAI, Methodist College students should:
When used with academic integrity, GenAI tools offer many potential benefits for students. The following are ways students may use AI tools without breaching academic integrity:
If your instructor allowed it and you use it exactly as approved
It's imperative that you ensure that you use only the AI tool approved AND that you're using it only in the way it's allowed within your class. For example, if your instructor says that you can ask ChatGPT to come up with five arguments for the structure of America's health insurance system and five arguments against the structure of America's health insurance system, but then you must discuss them critically yourself using sources you found through the Methodist College Library's databases, you are ONLY allowed to ask ChatGPT for the arguments. You would NOT be allowed to ask ChatGPT to discuss the arguments it came up with. It's suggested that you include the acknowledgement of how you used the AI, including your prompt(s) and the generated output with your assignment.
As a study aid to prepare for exams
GenAI can generate quizzes and questions that you can use to prepare for exams. However, you cannot upload content your professor created without their consent as this would be infringing on their copyright. Before uploading any course materials, you MUST ask your instructor to do so.
As a study aid to improve your understanding
You may ask GenAI to explain concepts and theories that you are having a hard time understanding in different ways and language that could be easier for the student to digest. It's important to note that you must evaluate the generated content for accuracy and that you cannot use it in your assignment, unless you have permission from your instructor to do so.
As a tool for time management and accessibility support
GenAI can help in creating supportive tools for your academic endeavors. This can include helping organize tasks, set study schedules, and creating a schedule to breakdown large assignment and tasks. It can also provide accessibility support through translation services, visual descriptions, and text-to-speech/speech-to-text.
Breaches in academic integrity would mean that you used an AI tool (i.e. ChatGPT) without permission from your instructor to create and/or complete your assignment, submitting it as your own work. Consequences of breaching academic integrity range from minor to more severe according to the Student Handbook, including:
There are a variety of ways you're committing breaches of academic integrity:
You would be cheating
Cheating includes misrepresenting one's knowledge by using any unauthorized device or aid in the preparation or completion of an academic assessment. If you did not get permission from your instructor to use an AI tool for your assignment and do so anyway, you would be using an unauthorized aid. As you are submitting an assignment that was not done by you, you would misrepresent what you can do and what you know.
You may be plagiarizing
Plagiarism means presenting the ideas and words of others as your own without giving proper credit to the original sources. If you are submitting an assignment that was created by an AI tool as your own creation, you are presenting the ideas of others, even if this "other" is not a human being.
You may be submitting fabricated or false information
Fabrication refers to the intentional use of invented information or the falsification of research or other findings. Text generating AI tools such as ChatGPT sometimes make up information and references to sources that don't exist. This is commonly referred to as "AI Hallucination." If you submit an assignment that contains information, research, or data that is made up and/or references that don't exist, then you are committing misconduct in the form of fabrication.