Discussion Board

One ethical dilemma I have observed is a student using AI tools to rewrite an essay without acknowledging the assistance. This raises concerns about academic integrity, authorship, and fairness. While AI can be a useful learning tool, submitting AI-generated or AI-revised work as entirely one’s own may misrepresent the student’s actual understanding and effort.

In this situation, the appropriate action would be to follow the institution’s policy, discuss the issue with the student, and encourage transparency about AI use. Rather than banning AI completely, educators should provide clear guidelines on acceptable and unacceptable uses.

To prevent similar issues in the future, universities should offer AI literacy training, clarify academic integrity expectations, and design assessments that emphasize critical thinking, reflection, and original analysis.
 

Case: Student rewrote full essay with AI but omitted disclosure

I observed a peer rely entirely on generative AI to restructure their coursework without stating tool usage.

1. Ethical issue at stake: The problem is not AI itself, but concealed reliance. Undeclared AI misrepresents independent analysis, breaching academic honesty; universities do not ban AI, yet lack of transparency distorts fair assessment of personal learning outcomes.

2. Appropriate actions: Have an open conversation to clarify AI as a legitimate learning aid. Guide them to add an AI usage appendix to their paper and voluntarily inform the tutor, rather than penalising them outright.

3. Future prevention: Design guided AI integration tasks in tutorials, standardise AI citation templates for all submissions, and frame AI as a research assistant instead of a forbidden shortcut to shift students’ mindsets.

There might be a dilemma that, student use AI tools without review it. AI may have hallucination.

I think for this case: teacher should know some tools to detect the hallucination, and student should review what AI produced as double-check.

I choose the case that a student used AI to rewrite most of an essay but did not mention it. The main issue is academic honesty. Although AI can help improve grammar and sentence structure, submitting AI-generated work as personal writing may give an unfair impression of the student's real ability.

I think the student should be asked to explain how AI was used and revise the essay in their own words. The teacher should not only punish the student, but also explain why acknowledgement is important. In the future, teachers could provide clear rules about acceptable AI use, such as using it for brainstorming or grammar checking but not for writing the whole assignment. Students could also include a short statement describing how they used AI. This would encourage responsible use and reduce similar problems.

The core issue is a breach of academic integrity. When a student uses AI to rewrite an essay without acknowledgment, it constitutes plagiarism and deception. It misrepresents the student's actual writing proficiency and critical thinking skills, undermining the trust between students and educators.

The teacher should address this privately with the student, explaining why unacknowledged AI assistance is unacceptable. Rather than implementing severe punitive measures immediately, the student should be allowed to rewrite the essay honestly, fostering a learning opportunity rather than a purely disciplinary one.

To prevent this, institutions must establish explicit guidelines detailing acceptable versus unacceptable AI assistance. Additionally, educators should design assessments that emphasize the writing process, requiring students to submit initial drafts and reflections alongside their final work.

One ethical issue I have observed is students using generative AI to rewrite assignments without acknowledging it. The main problem is not simply the use of AI itself, but the lack of transparency. If the final work is presented as entirely the student’s own writing, it may misrepresent the student’s actual ability and violate academic integrity. An appropriate action would be to clarify whether AI use is allowed in that task, and if so, how it should be acknowledged. Teachers should also explain the difference between using AI as a learning support and using it to replace one’s own thinking. To prevent similar issues, courses could provide clear AI-use guidelines, examples of acceptable acknowledgement, and assessment designs that require personal reflection, process evidence, or in-class components. This would help students use technology responsibly while maintaining fairness.

Case 1; A student used AI to rewrite an essay but didn't acknowledge it. 

Ethical issue: The essay rewrote by AI could not show the student's writing skills (e.g. Grammar and arrangement of paragraphs in a logical way). The student should acknowledge the usage of AI and keep the original writing for teacher's reference. Simular issue could be prevented by asking students to finish the writing in class without using any electronic device (just like the old way). 

A student rewrote his whole essay with AI and hid this use from the lecturer
 
This is academic integrity violation. The student failed to disclose AI assistance, which counts as undeclared academic aid, misleading the assessor about his own independent writing ability. It breaks honesty rules and undermines fair evaluation for all classes. Talk privately with the student to clarify rules of AI citation. Ask him to resubmit the work with full AI usage declaration and assign a formative writing task to practice independent composition. Record this incident for academic integrity file as a warning.

Prevention: Teachers should deliver clear guidelines on citing AI tools at the start of each course, share sample acknowledged AI writing, and hold short workshops to help students distinguish legitimate AI support from hidden cheating.

Under the case that student used AI to rewrite an essay but did not acknowledge it, I personaly do not experience it, either being the TA or myself, but I saw my classmates been through this. They either do not know that use AI for polishing also will cause this issue or they don't care. The ethical issue involved is integrity, being not honest of using tools. The appropriate action for students would be declare which part used the AI and how the AI is used. If necessary, providing the chat history is also preferred. For the teacher, I think the appropriate way is notifying the student about this issue and ask them for the declaration including hand in the chat history. We could prevent this issue by notifying the students about in which level using AI is acceptable in the first class, make announcement, writing this in syllabus and also include this in the homework description.

Yitong.

According to the official Elsevierpolicy ("Declaration of Generative AI in the writing process"), along with the author guidelines from Springer Nature and Wiley, top academic publishers generally permit the use of generative AI tools to improve the language, grammar, and readability of a manuscript. However, all three publishers strictly mandate a "Mandatory Disclosure"—explicitly stating that AI cannot be credited as an author and that any substantial rewriting or text generation must be transparently disclosed at the time of submission (typically in a dedicated AI declaration statement or acknowledgments). By concealing the AI's assistance, the student misleads the instructor regarding the writing process and violates the fundamental principle upheld by these publishers: that human authors bear sole and ultimate responsibility for the integrity and accuracy of the content. To address and prevent this, the instructor should guide the student to adhere to these publishing standards by requiring a formal disclosure detailing the specific tool used and the extent of the rewriting(like this: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01069-0 ), while embedding a standardized "AI Disclosure Template"(modeled after Elsevier and Wiley guidelines) into future assignment rubrics to ensure process-oriented compliance.