The following standards of academic integrity are required of all students. They are also found in the City Vision University catalog.
Continuing enrollment in City Vision University requires adherence to the university’s standards of academic integrity. Many of these standards may be intuitively understood and cannot in any case be listed exhaustively. The following examples represent some basic types of behavior that are unacceptable:
1. Cheating: using unauthorized notes, aids, or information when taking an examination; submitting work done by someone else as the student’s own; copying or paraphrasing someone else’s essays, projects, or other work and submitting it as the student’s own.
2. Plagiarism: submitting someone else’s work and claiming it as the student’s own or neglecting to give appropriate citation of one’s sources.
Plagiarism includes copying or paraphrasing materials from study guides, textbooks, someone else’s writing, or any other source (published or unpublished, including ChatGPT and other Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools), without proper citation. Any words, thoughts, or ideas taken from any other source must be properly documented according to an accepted style manual – that of the APA (American Psychology Association), version 7, or other guidelines as written in the course.
We strongly recommend that all students read this article on what plagiarism is and how to avoid it before beginning courses, so that they will not be subject to penalties for committing plagiarism in a course.
It is also plagiarism to submit an assignment in a class that is the same or substantially the same as one previously submitted for credit in another.
For students who use direct quotes, extensive paraphrasing or other materials from other sources in their papers (using correct citation), they should keep in mind that no more than 10% of material from other sources will be counted toward word counts or page length requirements.
Plagiarism can be either purposeful or unintentional; sanctions are more severe for what appears to be intentional plagiarism.
3. Policy on ChatGPT and Use of Generative AI Tools
Use of ChatGPT and similar generative AI tools to write papers most often a form of plagiarism, since it means using an uncited source. Also, it means students are not learning from their assignments as ChatGPT often does much of the work.
ChatGPT and similar tools may be used in a very limited way, if they are properly cited as described in this link. We have trained all faculty to use our plagiarism checking software to check for use of AI (which is an included feature). If they believe it has been used without citation, they will report that to the Director of Student Services so we can investigate.
There are several reasons why we take intentional plagiarism like this seriously. Many of our students either have an addiction recovery background or work with those in recovery. Intentional plagiarism is cheating, which is the equivalent of a “moral relapse”. Both addiction and cheating are forms of shortcuts that provide short-term gain for a long-term cost. For a student to use an AI for their assignments is comparable to you paying for a gym membership, and then putting a step counter on your dog and congratulating yourself for getting 30,000 steps a day from the dog’s exercise without doing any exercise yourself. The point of the gym membership is that actually exercising improves your health. The same is true cognitively with education.
Given that technology is one of our core values, we recognize that ChatGPT and similar tools have many good uses, but if misused, they can severely interfere with learning. We recognize that the vast majority of our students have not had any problem like this, but we have seen ChatGPT misused by enough of our students that we needed to add this policy.
Sanctions may be applied for students who use more than 10% material from ChatGPT or other generative AI in their papers, even if cited correctly.
4. Obtaining an Unfair Advantage:
• Stealing, reproducing, circulating, or otherwise gaining access to examination materials prior to the time authorized by the instructor.
• Unauthorized collaborating on an academic assignment.
• Retaining, possessing, using, or circulating previously given examination materials where those materials clearly indicate that they are to be returned to the advisor or to the City Vision University offices at the conclusion of the examination.
• The sale of completed assignments for the use of other students.
5. Misrepresentation: forgery of official academic documentation; presentation of altered or falsified documents or testimony to a university office or official; misrepresenting one’s identity or that of another for academic purposes, such as taking an exam for another student; or lying about personal circumstances to postpone tests or assignments.
6. Obstruction: conduct that interferes with other students’ ability to learn, such as deleting their computer files or disruption of class forums.
Disciplinary action may range from lowering a grade for a paper to dismissal from the program, depending on severity of the offense. Further details on this are given below.
Policy on Grammarly and Other Computer-Based Proofreading Tools
Grammarly and other computer-based proofreading tools cannot be used in Business Communications and English Composition. Spellcheckers such as those included in Microsoft Word and Google Docs are permitted, however. This is because Business Communication and English Composition are intended to give students practice in how to write grammatically, and also because these tools, if used extensively, can be flagged as AI by our plagiarism checker, Turnitin.
In all other courses besides Business Communications and English Composition, Grammarly and similar tools may be used only as described below:
Always allowed
• Use of Microsoft Word or Google Docs features to identify spelling, grammatical, punctuation or formatting errors.
Allowed uses of Grammarly (except in Business Communication and English Composition):
- To identify a spelling, grammatical, punctuation or formatting error.
- To suggest the use of a replacement word or a small number of alternative words.
- To suggest a minor edit to a single sentence to improve clarity.
Not Allowed:
- Use of Grammarly’s Generative Text options
- To generate text to include in a paper.
- Use of a “text spinner” or paraphrasing tool
- To rewrite or add to entire paragraphs or sections of a paper.
- To create an entire paper using prompts which is then copied and pasted by the student.
If you use Grammarly (or similar tools) for assignments or discussion posts, you should add a statement at the bottom of your paper or post that says the following: I used Grammarly to improve my writing for this assignment including the following allowed features. LIST ALLOWED FEATURES YOU USED FROM THE ABOVE LIST. I did not use any of the Not Allowed features or any other generative AI tools like ChatGPT to generate text for this assignment (unless cited as required). Providing this disclosure is a good best practice. In addition, because the use of Grammarly often results in warnings in City Vision’s AI Detection Software, this notice will help faculty and staff better discern false warnings.
There are three reasons why some uses of Grammarly and similar tools are not allowed:
- They go beyond simply assisting a student with their writing clarity and correctness, into actually writing for the student. This takes away from the research and reflection that is essential to academic learning.
- When Grammarly and similar tools are used to rewrite or generate significant portions of a paper, the paper will show up as plagiarized from AI in our plagiarism checker, Turnitin.
- The purpose of courses like Business Communications and English Composition is to teach basic writing skills. Tools like Grammarly can interfere with learning these skills. Just like working out at a gym, you only get better at writing with practice. This could also be comparable to not allowing calculators in basic math courses that are teaching the functions the calculator provides.
Severity of Offense
Not all violations of the Standards of Academic Integrity are equally severe. Therefore, the sanctions that are applied may vary, based both on the severity of the offense and the intentionality with which it was committed.
Where intent is questionable, or the extent of the violation is less severe, then lesser sanctions are appropriate, such as reduction of points given for the assignment or requiring the assignment to be resubmitted after the violation has been explained. This level of sanction may be appropriate in cases where a student failed to given proper acknowledgement in a limited section of an assignment, or a first offense of plagiarism was committed without intent on the part of the student.
When academic dishonesty was more clearly evident, or its extent more severe, then greater sanctions are appropriate, such as a failing grade for the assignment, the entire course, or, in some cases, a temporary suspension from the program. This level of sanction may be appropriate when unacknowledged plagiarism is more extensive, or a student submits the same assignment in multiple courses.
Finally, the most severe instances of academic dishonesty may warrant permanent academic dismissal. Some offenses that may fall into this category are buying coursework online, violating the proctor policy by taking an exam for another person or having another person take one’s own exam, submitting the same work as another student, and repeated instances of plagiarism after being warned by the Academic Oversight team.
In all cases where the Standards of Academic Integrity are violated, a certain amount of discretion is required to determine the appropriate level of sanction, while following the Due Process procedures described below.
Due Process
The following principles of due process apply for suspected violations of the standards of academic integrity, just as they do for other violations of the University Code of Conduct.
The Academic Administration staff, as well as the affected faculty and Director of Student Services, may be involved in investigating suspected violations of the Standards of Academic Integrity.
A student suspected of violating the Standards of Academic Integrity shall, at a minimum, be accorded the following rights:
- A prompt investigation of all charges conducted, insofar as possible, in a manner that prevents disclosure of the student’s identity to persons not involved in the offense or the investigatory process (while the investigation is in process).
- Investigations may include informal review and discussion with an official of the school prior to bringing an official charge, provided that such review does not compromise the rights of the student in the formal process.
- Reasonable written notice of the facts and evidence underlying the rule violation.
- Reasonable written notice of the procedure by which the accuracy of the charge will be determined.
- Reasonable time within which to prepare a response to the charge prior to the implementation of any sanctions.
A proven violation of the standards of academic integrity may be disclosed to partner organizations or other relevant parties, if warranted as part of the sanctions applied.