This is exactly what UoN will do if it catches you using ChatGPT

Over the past three years the number of potential cases of academic misconduct has been steadily rising at Russell Group universities, mainly due to exams being online due to covid. Now, with exams returning to in-person, ChatGPT has put another thorn in the side of lecturers who are trying to spot misconduct.

What is UoN doing to counteract this?

Nottingham says markers are trained to spot changes in students’ writing styles, and said the uni has various ways of detecting when people have used ChatGPT. A spokesperson told The Tab that academic misconduct: “includes cheating, falsifying results, plagiarism and the use of essay banks or the misuse of AI software such as ChatGPT.”

They said: “The University has a raft of measures to detect and deter this behaviour and academic markers are trained to spot changes in their students’ writing styles. A range of resources and tutorials are also offered to students to enhance study skills and emphasise the penalties for cheating.”

In addition to this, plagiarism checking site Turnitin is developing software to detect use of ChatGPT (and other AI chatbots) in essays.

Penalties for academic misconduct

Your school’s academic misconduct officer can impose a range of penalties. Starting with a written warning when guidelines were mistakenly broken. Increasing in severity to a ‘mark of zero for the specific material’ subject to academic misconduct or an overall percentage reduction on your coursework mark as a whole.

If the majority of your course is coursework based, look away now. For serious breaches you can be awarded a mark of zero for the entire piece of coursework. Doesn’t really seem worth it does it?

While ChatGPT could be a valuable tool in helping you understand content from your course, it isn’t there to simply do your assignments for you, and it definitely isn’t worth the risk. Stick to the late night library sessions and get your work done the old fashioned way.