Academic Integrity Policy
Academic Integrity Policy
There is no space for academic dishonesty in this class. All students in my classes are responsible for the Orientation content on academic integrity and plagiarism, and you are held to these standards throughout the class. Collaborating on or plagiarizing class materials in whole or in part (including patchwriting, which is the most common form of plagiarism I see), or using AI or other technology to otherwise produce work that is not your own will be considered an act of academic dishonesty and will not be handled lightly; remember that students who register for classes are required to abide by the Student Code of Conduct and violation of the code is basis for referral to the Student Conduct Office, dismissal from class, or dismissal from the College (see the Student Conduct Office for exact wording and language). If you are academically dishonest:
For a first and second offense you will at minimum receive a zero for the assignment and you will lose a letter grade in the class for each offense. At my discretion, depending on the severity of the incident and other factors (such as a previous warning in this or another one of my classes at this or another school), you may lose more than one letter grade, receive an F for the semester, and/or be referred for college-level discipline.
For a third offense, even if it occurs before the first and/or second offense is graded (for example, the assignments are due on the same day) you will automatically receive an F in the class, and may be referred for college-level discipline.
The Academic Integrity policy as described above applies to AI use.
This is a zero-AI class, because the heart of social work is quick, analytical, flexible critical thinking skills, and when working in the field with clients in high-pressure situations you will not be able to put everything into a chatbot to give you the answer. It’s important you know how to think through questions on your own, and to be able to express those thoughts, also on your own — and the research is showing very clearly that using AI is seriously harming those skills. It certainly has it’s place for menial busywork (you will see a couple places in the course where I tell you I used it for something) but all of the work you are assigned in this class has a specific purpose: not one bit of it is busywork.
This is a zero-AI class, because in this class you are learning to think critically, generate ideas, and explain your process and results verbally and in writing. If you use AI to do that thinking or expressing for you, you will still complete the task, but you won’t get anything out of it. AI is a wonderful tool for busywork, but has no place in a course that is crafted to help you think for yourself and apply concepts to you. The chatbot is not you: it can’t do that work, and there is no busywork in the course for it to do.
Do not use AI, do not use Grammarly, do not use translation software -- nothing that creates any words for you or modifies any of your words for any purpose. Every assignment you submit should be created by you, from beginning to end, including content editing (spell check is allowed). I would rather see less than perfect writing than AI generated material. All assignments are subject to being run through one or more AI detection tools inside Canvas or outside of it, and high suspected AI percentages, a marked difference between the assignment at hand and your typical writing style, or large pastes from outside your Google Doc will trigger the policy, as above -- this will also trigger a much closer re-examination of all your previous work and re-grading if indicated.
If you received a 0 for an assignment and a notification in the submission comments that your assignment has been flagged under the Academic Integrity/AI policy, you have 72 hours to respond and request a meeting to discuss the incident and the assignment in question. If you do not do this, or if you do not attend the meeting we set, I will assume you accept the application of the policy. If you attend the meeting claiming you did not use AI but cannot satisfactorily explain the circumstances or assignment, you will be referred to the Student Conduct Office.
It is required that all students compose all written assignments in Google Docs (as described in detail in the Writing Guidelines page in the Orientation module in your course). The Writing Guidelines require you to show your process on all written assignments by using Google Docs and submitting the shared/editor access URL for each assignment. I will check your work as needed using Google Docs and other tools designed for a detailed look at your process. Please retain the Google Docs file until your final grade is posted.
If your Doc is not visible to me or is not set to Editor, I will mark the assignment Incomplete or 0, and if the lock date has passed, you will not be able to resubmit (so make sure it is set correctly -- see the Writing Guidelines for a full explanation and video for how to create and submit your assignments). A 0 for these reasons is not an Academic Integrity violation -- submit your URL/change the permissions on your Doc and your work will be graded as long as the semester has not ended.