1.3: Plagiarism and AI Use

1.3 Plagiarism and AI Use

Plagiarism

What is Plagiarism? According to the Butler Community College student handbook, plagiarism is “Copying or otherwise using another’s work and presenting it as one's own constitutes plagiarism. Plagiarism is grounds for failure of the assignment or of the class.” The handbook and your syllabus go on at length about plagiarism, but it is important to know that plagiarism can have dire consequences but is easily avoidable. 

It is crucial to cite carefully and to acknowledge sources. You will learn about source citation as you are required to cite sources in EG 101 so be sure to read through this content carefully to avoid plagiarism. 

Reusing previously written work is also considered plagiarism; you are technically plagiarizing yourself because you are using your past work without citation. If you want to use a paper you wrote for a course previously, be sure to reach out to your teacher before doing so. Reusing work turned in for previous courses is often considered academically dishonest, and you will most likely receive a 0 if you turn in a previously written paper for this course. 

AI Use in English Class

It is very important to note that there is not a standardized way of dealing with AI in EG 101 at Butler: some teachers will consider any use of AI academic dishonesty. So please be sure to review your teacher's AI/ChatGPT policy before reading this section. 

If your instructor does allow some use of AI in your writing course, it is important to note that when you use AI, it should be used as a tutor to comment on and help you refine your ideas. AI cannot be used as a substitute for original writing or thinking. Any sentences you obtained from AI should be in quotes and credited, and any ideas from AI should also be credited; using language from an AI in your paper without crediting it is academic dishonesty. To use AI productively, you should generally begin with your own ideas and then have AI help you develop and or refine those ideas. You never want to go to AI and ask it for ideas before you have developed some of your own— this is academic dishonesty and will generally lead to poor writing and low-level ideas.

AI, however, can be used as a tutor of sorts if your teacher allows its use. For example, you do not want to ask AI to produce an outline for you, but you can ask it to comment on your outline and point out places you might need more development, just like you would ask a tutor. You do not want to ask AI to write your rough draft for you, but you can upload your rough draft and ask ChatGPT to suggest ideas for organization, evidence, etc.

But do be warned: AI is not perfect. What we currently refer to as AI is better described as predictive text; there is still quite a bit of debate over whether or not predictive text is actually "intelligent." These algorithms draw from information on the internet, so they will not be able to come up with novel or unique ideas. Instead, the ideas you get from ChatGPT are more likely to be "webpage" level— run-of-the-mill ideas that are drawn from what everyone else is saying. While this type of thinking can help you consider if a sentence is correct or a transition is strong, it is not going to help you write A or B papers in EG 102. Only the thinking your brain can do will help you pass the course.

When you consider how and if to use ChatGPT or other AI in your papers, consider your teacher's opinion first but also consider what capacity you want to use ChatGPT in. The point of this class is to help you grow as a writer, and leaning on ChatGPT too much could handicap your skills so that you are not able to carry out these functions when you are in higher-level courses.

Finally, it is important to remember to protect yourself if you are using any kind of AI, including Grammarly, for help in this course. Turnitin and other AI checkers are used at our college, and these checkers can flag your work as being written 100% by AI if you are using Grammarly too much. As a result, it is highly recommended that you do all drafting in Google Docs; Google Docs timestamps your work, and you can use this doc to show your thinking on the paper over time. So if you plan on using ChatGPT, Grammarly, or any other AI, be sure to credit the software and also use Google Docs as you draft so that you can prove you did your own work and did not just copy and pasted a response from ChatGPT into a Word document.

Acknowledging Ethical AI Use

Again, it is also important to remember that you must credit ChatGPT or any other AI that you use in a paper. You should cite AI just as you would cite a source: any time you use language directly from the software, it should be in quotes, and anytime you paraphrase, you need to make it clear that the ideas came from AI. 

If you wish to use language directly from AI, and your teacher allows it, you can cite this information like a source. So you will paraphrase or quote the information in the same way you would with any other source.ChatGPT technically has no author, so MLA says that you should cite the prompt as the title of the source when you credit GPT. The example prompt the MLA website uses is “Describe the symbolism of the green light in the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Works Cited citation for this prompt is as follows:

“Describe the symbolism of the green light in the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald” prompt. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 8 Mar. 2023,

chat.openai.com/chat.

 

If you did not cite AI as a source but instead used it to plan or revise your paper (including Grammarly use), you need to include that in an AI disclosure statement at the end of your paper. This disclosure statement will include a short paragraph telling the tool you used, tell how you used the tool (for help outlining, strengthening topic sentences, etc), and tell what kind of human oversight was included. If you are using a tool other than Grammarly, include the prompt and a link to the AI conversation.

 

Exercise 1.3: Determining Ethical AI Use

Read through the scenarios below and consider if this is ethical AI use or not. If it is not ethical AI use, what could the student have done to use AI ethically in this instance?

1) Hailey is writing a comparison and contrast paper for her EG 101 class. She comes up with the topics but feels stuck. She asks ChatGPT to produce an outline for her and uses that outline to write her paper. She does not credit ChatGPT when she turns in the final paper.

2) Kaden is working on the final draft of his research paper. He has come up with all of his ideas thus far, but he is struggling with a conclusion. He puts his paper into ChatGPT and asks it for help writing his conclusion. He feels ChatGPT wrote a better conclusion than he could have, so he cuts and pastes it into his paper without quotes or credit.

3) Elijah's teacher allows him to use AI for help refining brainstorming or revising papers, but they have to cite AI use.students Elijah is writing a paper on "The Lottery" and is struggling to catalogue the symbols in the story. Elijah asks Claude for help and then summarizes Claude's answer in his intro to give a list of symbols. He does credit Claude with an internal citation and cites Claude at the end of the paper in the Works Cited page.

4) Willow is writing her final paper for EG 101 and is struggling with proofreading to see if she has enough evidence for her claims. Her teacher allows her to use AI to point out errors in her paper, but she needs to fix those errors on her own. She uploads her paper to ChatGPT and asks it so assess where she might need more evidence. Willow focuses on adding more evidence to the spots ChatGPT points out, and then she adds a note to the end of her paper telling the reader that she used ChatGPT during the revision process to help point out problem spots with a link to the ChatGPT conversation.