Academic integrity and use of GenAI

This chapter explains what plagiarism or possible misuse of Generative AI (GenAI) could look like. Check with your instructor at the beginning of the term about their policy and process on academic offences and use of GenAI. If you suspect plagiarism, cheating, or misuse of GenAI in student work, notify the instructor and they will take appropriate action. As a TA, you are generally not responsible for directly reporting an academic offence to the Academic Integrity office.

Academic integrity

Concordia’s Academic Code of Conduct defines academic integrity as “honesty, responsibility, and fairness in all aspects of academic life.”

The most common academic offences are: plagiarism, unauthorized materials/devices during an exam, and collaborating with others on individual assignments.

As a TA, you can remind your students about this by defining it and discussing how to avoid it at the beginning of the course. The video below offers a deeper explanation.

Academic Integrity – Student Advocacy Office video © Concordia University

You can also share resources such as the Help & how-to guides available online from the Library for students to cite research correctly to avoid plagiarism.

Turnitin

Your instructor might use Turnitin’s OriginalityCheck tool when grading to check for possible plagiarism. This tool compares submitted work against a database of webpages, other student papers, and published scholarly work. This tool is embedded into Moodle and produces a report highlighting where the submitted work matches the other sources.

This video explains how the tool works.

Turnitin OriginalityCheck Demo video  © TurnitinAcademy

Generative Artificial Intelligence

Use of Generative artificial intelligence (or GenAI) such as stand-alone tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney or embedded in apps such as Grammarly or Microsoft Co-pilot is becoming increasingly common in and outside of the university.

Presently, there is no university-wide policy on the use of GenAI in the classroom. There are diverse teaching approaches and learning outcomes across the university that necessitate tailored, context-specific guidance for GenAI instead of university-wide policies.

The CTL has a set of guidelines to help faculty make informed decisions about its uses in their classes. It is up to the instructor to articulate their position on GenAI, including the constraints and misuse, clearly within the classroom, on Moodle sites, and in syllabi.

For example, an instructor may prohibit the use of any GenAI tool in a course focused heavily on developing students’ writing skills. On the other hand, another course that is not focused on writing may allow tools such as Grammarly, but not ChatGPT. Another instructor may allow all use of GenAI if the process is shown, and the AI is cited properly.