Academic Integrity and GAI
The University of Massachusetts Global is an academic community based on the principles of honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. Academic integrity is a core University value, which ensures respect for the academic reputation of the University, its students, faculty and staff, and the degrees it confers. The University expects that students will conduct themselves in an honest and ethical manner and respect the intellectual work of others.
With regard to GAI, University policy means that students should only use artificial intelligence in a manner that is consistent with course requirements and which does not misrepresent machine generated work as their own. Even when students are permitted to use GAI at any stage of a research project, their work must be completed honestly using principles of Academic Integrity.
This page provides tips for identifying potential academic integrity violations and offers tips for citing GAI-generated material.
Page Contents:
- Academic Integrity Resources
- Identifying Academic Integrity Violations
- GAI and Plagiarism
- Citing Material Generated with AI
Academic Integrity Resources
UMass Global's Standards and Policy of Academic Integrity is in the University catalogue accessible through MyUMass Global.
On the library's Academic Integrity and Plagiarism Avoidance page, Academic Integrity is defined for students:
Academic Integrity is a set of principles used by scholars to show respect to those who contributed to our knowledge base. The principles include respecting intellectual property and avoiding plagiarism by citing properly.
An ethical researcher takes the time to carefully analyze and understand sources selected for the project and by properly acknowledging the work of others using proper citation methods. Research material must be used according to a set of standards known as Academic Integrity, which is set of principles used by scholars to show respect to those who contributed to our knowledge base. In the United States, ideas and their expressions are considered to be intellectual property and, unless otherwise noted, are protected by copyright laws that prevent anyone from profiting off the ideas of another.
To reinforce University policy, you might find it helpful early in your course to require students to complete the library-developed Academic Integrity Tutorial, which can be embedded in Blackboard to ensure completion.
You may find it useful to refer students to the following resources and discuss them in class:
Identifying Academic Integrity Violations
The following checklist from the Center for Instructional Innovation may help you detect Academic Integrity violations. This list is not exhaustive, nor is it be considered definitive. While these signs might raise suspicions, they are not proof of GAI usage or other violations. Engaging in a conversation with the student and exploring their understanding of the paper's content is an important step in addressing any concerns.
- Sudden Quality Leap: Noticeable, significant improvement in writing quality or sophistication compared to the student's previous work. Usage of technical terms or complex concepts beyond the student's usual level of understanding.
- Inconsistent Writing Style: Shifts in language style, tone, or vocabulary within the paper. Sections may appear disjointed or lack smooth integration. Inconsistent flow of arguments and ideas.
- Lack of Personal Voice: Absence of the student's unique writing style or voice.
- Lack of Depth in Discussions: Superficial discussions that lack critical analysis or meaningful insights.
- Inability to Explain: If the student struggles to explain or elaborate on specific concepts or arguments presented in the paper.
- Flawless Grammar: Unusual absence of grammatical errors, especially if it contrasts with the student's typical writing.
- Overreliance on Sources: Heavy reliance on numerous sources without substantial original analysis or interpretation.
- Improper Citations: Incorrect or missing citations, suggesting that the student may not have properly understood or acknowledged their sources.
- Sources Cannot Be Located: GAI-output may generate fake citations that you will be unable to locate in library databases or Google Scholar. Some clues may be:
- Elements of the citation (e.g. the journal or source title) are vague or do not match the content under consideration at all.
- Citations have mistakes or do not follow a consistent style, indicating that they may be cobbled together from various legitimate sources.
- Selected sources are not commonly associated with the course content or the student's academic level.
- Phrases in titles are repeated across multiple citations.
- Content does not align with an academic timeline (e.g. a theory shows up in citations before it was posited or before it could reasonably make it to a scholarly journal).
GAI and Plagiarism
Even pre-GAI, it was often difficult to detect whether students cheated or plagiarized. GAI is making that determination even more tricky. Bodnick notes that "while GPT-4 might sometimes copy someone else’s ideas in a way that might make a professor suspicious of plagiarism, more often it generates the type of fairly unoriginal synthesis writing that’s rewarded in non-advanced university classes" (2023). While plagiarism checker tools such as TurnitIn can be useful identifying problematic writing, they have not yet completely caught up with GAI, and no such tool is ever totally reliable, either with identifying actual plagiarism or with clearing instances of work that may appear to be plagiarism but in fact are not. OpenAI's own attempt at plagiarism detection failed.
Therefore, if you suspect that a work has been plagiarized or is otherwise the product of cheating, you should use a variety of strategies to examine the work, starting with considering the factors noted in the Identifying Academic Integrity Violations section above.
The Center for Instructional Innovation (CII) also offers a variety of tools to help you detect instances of cheating and work effectively with plagiarism detection tools:
- CII's Academic Integrity page includes a series of videos about Academic Integrity violations and how to use TurnitIn.
- In addition, there is guidance for using TurnitIn and Grademark.
You can also ask a librarian for assistance with finding research material associated with a case of suspected plagiarism.
Citing Material Generated With GAI
Students should be told that GAI output is intellectual property generated by seeking material from many other sources. As such, like any other resource, material generated with GAI should be acknowledged with citations and bibliographies, and material that GAI draws upon should also be cited whenever possible.
Best practices for citing when using GAI-generated material:
- Ask GAI to cite its sources.
- When GAI provides sources, consult those original sources instead of relying on the GAI mashup when possible. This is to ensure that GAI is accurately representing the source and to correct inevitable errors in GAI generated citation.
The publishers of the major citation styles have not yet settled on a standard format for citing GAI-generated output. Until they do, the references and citations you will construct for material generated by AI should follow the same general principles used for any other type of source:
- The author/creator takes the first position, e.g. ChatGPT or Bard.
- Following the name of the author/creator, put the year that the output was created in parentheses and add the month and exact day of generation if possible.
- In place of a title, use the question you entered into the GAI generator.
- Following the question, add the company that created the GAI generator you are using, e.g. Google or Open AI.
- End with the URL of the generated material.
A citation for ChatGPT in APA Style would look like this:
You can find more about citing in APA at the following:
In addition, librarians will schedule on-demand workshops for students needing assistance with citing and creating bibliographies.