Academic Honesty
(including the use of Large Language Models)
All of my classes emphasize the importance of entering into conversation with other people, whether your classmates or published scholars. The most original thinking comes from serious engagement with other people's ideas.
In our academic context, we need to acknowledge the influence of those ideas. Academic citation allows us a kind of formal way of thanking the people who have shaped our thinking. Following the conventions of academic citations has all of these benefits:
- It shows that you care to enter the academic community in a way that demonstrates your respect for other members of that community; a citation demonstrates that you have cared enough to find the source and to acknowledge its importance to your own work.
- It lets a knowledgeable reader understand your ideas in the context of an existing scholarly conversation.
- It allows other people interested in your ideas to consult the same sources you used and do their own thinking about related issues. (For scholars, the citations of a good article are a research gold mine.)
Plagiarism (or academic dishonesty) is taking a passage or passages from another person's discourse, either word for word or in general, and submitting them as your own. Academic fraud of this kind violates the trust underlying a productive and enjoyable academic environment. It will also result in substantial punishments that, at Grinnell, are administered by the Committee on Academic Standing.
Important addition for the age of Large Language Models: Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have become widely available and can sometimes generate text that will fulfill the requirements of the output of college assignments, including mine. The value of college assignments, however, lies mainly in the process of their creation: the creativity and discovery that come from rendering your own ideas in text. I expect you to experience that kind of creativity and discovery, and sidestepping the process with an LLM is therefore an academic honesty violation.
That said, LLMs are being integrated into writing software in ways that produce subtler effects, such as suggesting phrasing or changes to grammar or spelling. I do not require you to mention this kind of routine software assistance in your writing, but you should understand the crucial point that you are responsible for the writing you submit for an assignment. The suggestions of LLMs are often misleading or plainly wrong; you need to use your own judgment in the editing process.
An even larger problem with LLMs is that they fabricate quotations, paper titles, and other forms of scholarly discourse. Remember that LLMs have no motivation; they generate strings of words by following certain rules, and those rules lead them to make stuff up. Some if it will be accurate, some won't, and the LLM does not care. But you need to care because you are responsible for your text. LLMs fabricate facts, sources, and quotations routinely. If you use that fabricated material, you are responsible for the fabrication. Any use of a non-traceable quotation or source will require me, by College policy, to refer your assignment to the Committee on Academic Standing as a violation of academic honesty.
Of course, you can avoid those problems entirely by doing your own scholarly and creative work! To draw on other writers but avoid plagiarizing, use the following techniques.
- Direct Quotation: If you use the exact words or a writer you consulted, you must put their words in quotation marks and tell your reader where the quotation came from. For this class, use Chicago NB style as your citation format. If you have any questions about Chicago NB style, let me know as soon as they arise.
- Indirect Quotation: When you summarize or paraphrase another writer, use phrases such as "According to ... " or "As ... argues" to tell your reader what you are doing.
- General Acknowledgment of Indebtedness: When your thinking has been influenced by a source in a broad way, but you do not have a specific place to acknowledge that influence, you need to let your reader know that with wording such as "Much of the following discussion is based on material found in ...." (For example, I used this technique to acknowledge a debt on an in-class undergrad exam, when I had no access to specific wording or page numbers.) In most cases, however, one of the first two techniques works better than this one to let your reader know exactly what influence the cited writer has had on your writing.
- Bibliography: This will allow you to list the specific sources you have used. We will discuss the format of the list later. Basically, plagiarism is the academic version of forgetting to thank someone who has been nice to you. The consequences, however, are more serious than those of most lapses in politeness. Consult the Student Handbook for the official College policy. If you have questions about the meaning of this statement, see me immediately.