Discussion Board
Case: A student use AI to rewrite essay without acknowledgement
Refection:
This dilemma reflects the problem in academic honesty, and the incomplete of awareness in appropriate using AI. I think the firstly, the assessment result of this student should be canceled. Besides, the student should be asked about the reason they choose to do this and teached with the importance of originality of academic essays.
To prevent this kind of problem, we can set introduction lectures about the appropriate use of AI, and the boundaries of using AI as assistance.
Case: Using AI to rewrite an essay without acknowledgment.
Using AI to rewrite an essay without acknowledgment implicates honesty (misrepresentation), fairness (unearned advantage), responsibility (policy breach), respect (failure to credit), and trust. Appropriate actions: the student should disclose the AI use, resubmit with transparent attribution (tool, prompts, extent of edits), meet the instructor, accept consequences, and review citation and integrity policies. The instructor can apply penalties or allow a learning-focused resubmission, depending on policy and intent. Prevention: clear course and institutional guidelines on AI use, explicit attribution requirements, AI literacy instruction, assignments emphasizing process (drafts, notes, reflections), routine disclosure statements for AI assistance, and support for time management and writing. Encouraging courage to seek extensions or help reduces temptation to misrepresent.
Case: A student use AI to rewrite essay
Refect
When a student uses AI tools to write a paper and then denies it, this constitutes cheating. When assigning papers or assignments, AI tools should be used as aids to help students, not to complete the paper for them. Currently, many AI tools are available, provided by schools or in the community. Schools and society have an obligation to help citizens define boundaries. In schools, teachers should help students use AI tools correctly, and there should be penalties for violations; this involves academic integrity. Like this student, even if he denies it, the teacher can use AI tools to reproduce his actions, persuading him to recognize his mistake. In the future, with the development of AI tools and the increasing number of methods to detect AI, students will be able to distinguish the boundaries of their use.
Case: Student sometimes used AI tools (like ChatGPT) to write research paper and course reports but didn’t acknowledge it.
Issue: The core ethical and integrity issues here are lack of academic originality and transparency.
Actions: We will talk to the students privately. We will position AI as a "collaborative tool" and guide them to revise their draft. At the same time, we will remind them of the school's integrity policy, focusing on education rather than punishment to build accountability.
Future prevention: Integrate AI ethics modules into course design, such as requiring an "AI usage log" (including prompts and edit records), and adopt process-based assessments (e.g., comparing draft versions). Teachers can model ethical AI use, like generating outlines then manually refining them, to normalize its role in academia.
The students' use of AI tools in the case undermined academic integrity as well as the related teaching objectives and plans. As teachers, the appropriate approach is to have a private conversation with the students instead of criticizing them in public. They should be required to resubmit their answers without using AI tools and reflect on their own thinking. In future teaching, the use of AI tools should not be completely prohibited because they can assist students in learning. Instead, students should be taught how to use AI tools reasonably.
During my undergraduate studies, I observed a phenomenon. Many courses have assignments that are short essays, giving a topic and requiring a certain word count. However, the course does not teach students how to write these papers, nor does it provide the corresponding guidelines.This has led many students to use AI to complete this assignment.
I think that clear assignment requirements may reduce students' use of AI.
Case: A student used AI to rewrite an essay but did not acknowledge it, and just directly upload it.
- The ethical issue is academic honesty and transparency. Using AI without citation misrepresents authorship and undermines fair assessment.
- Appropriate actions: privately discuss the incident with the student to understand intent, explain academic expectations, and require a revision with guidance or apply a grade penalty if misconduct is clear. Follow school policy for formal reporting.
- Prevention: update rubrics to state AI rules, teach students how to cite AI, design tasks that require personal reflection or short in-class components, and run workshops on academic integrity and responsible AI use. Clear communication and supportive education reduce temptation and improve learning.
case：When students are required to complete literature review assignments that cannot be done with AI assistance, they may use AI tools to help organize their thoughts or find literature in order to complete the task quickly. However, in order to deceive their teachers and obtain a better grade, they may deny that they have used AI.
Reflect on these questions:
• What ethical or integrity issue is involved?
The core ethical issue is academic dishonesty. Using AI for a prohibited task and then lying about it constitutes deception, violating principles of integrity and fair evaluation.
• What actions or decisions would be appropriate?
The appropriate action is for the student to complete the work as instructed, without AI, or to transparently discuss permitted uses with the teacher beforehand.
• How could similar issues be prevented in future?
To prevent this, educators should design assignments that inherently require critical human thought—such as personal analysis, in-class presentations, or annotated drafts—making AI less useful. Clear guidelines on AI use and open conversations about academic integrity are also essential.
During my undergraduate studies, while serving as a class representative and assisting the teacher in grading short essay assignments, I noticed that most students wrote with great care. Their essays contained interesting perspectives, but they often had some spelling or grammatical errors to varying degrees. However, a few students submitted work that could be described as flawless—free of any spelling or grammar mistakes. Yet, the content seemed somewhat generic, which made me suspect that the essays might have been generated by AI. Although I had no concrete evidence, after discussing it with the teacher, we still ended up giving them a decent grade.
AI is undoubtedly a useful tool, but if students can achieve high scores by submitting entirely AI-generated papers, it would be unfair to their peers. Fortunately, there are now many tools available on the market that can detect whether content is AI-generated, helping us make more accurate assessments.
good