Plagiarism/AI Policy
As we all know, plagiarism has been an ongoing issue and AI is becoming an increasingly widespread tool for student use in submitting college assignments on all topics. At the moment, there is no completely foolproof way to detect AI. Turnitin (used by Canvas) does claim to detect such plagiarism; Safeassign (used by Blackboard) did not develop this software yet. When running papers through either Turnitin or SafeAssign, the plagiarized texts will be highlighted and linked to their original sources. The AI checker highlights the paragraphs that seem to be artificially created.
Students should be made aware that their submissions will be evaluated through a plagiarism/AI detector. Sara Schenirer has a ZERO tolerance policy for ANY form of plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) or AI.
Together with Dr. Marina Gelfand, we have worked to come up with the following policy, which is subject to change as more progress is made in this area:
On any course which includes writing, we suggest that you give an in-class writing assignment during the first class to get a baseline for each student.
Personalize assignments as much as possible to minimize the option/temptation to use AI altogether.
Use multiple choice questions whenever possible
Students cannot use Grammarly or Quillbot as they are now linked to AI and the student’s work may show up as computer-generated. Therefore, we recommend that students use their college’s tutoring services for help, if necessary.
Brainfuse Online Tutoring – students can go to their Sara Schenirer Student Portal for more information.
CASE and the STEM Center & TutorMe – students can go to their Sara Schenirer Student Portal for more information.
All relevant assignments (including smaller weekly assignments) should be submitted through Turnitin/SafeAssign. If you do not know how to set this up in Blackboard/ Canvas, please ask Leala Weiss at [email protected] for assistance.
For Turnitin (on Canvas), to see the AI score, you must open the report.
In general, we will accept a plagiarism score below 20% and an AI score below 5%. These percentages should allow for repetition of the question in the answer, direct quotes which were cited correctly, and often-used phrases (which show up as plagiarism even though they are not).
If the Turnitin score is above 20% and/or the AI score is above 5%, please do not grade the assignment and email the complete Turnitin Report to Dr. Donn ([email protected]) for guidance.
If there is concern that a student used AI, they will be responsible to prove that they did not. One option is by requesting that they provide a draft of their report.
If a student was found to plagiarize:
First offense is 0 on the assignment and the student cannot resubmit. (Please make sure that the coordinator is informed about this.)
Second offense is a failure on the course.
If you are unsure what to do, please reach out to your coordinator for assistance.
It is our hope that this approach will accomplish the following:
Avoid needless accusations of AI which are ultimately impossible to prove
Encourage students to take responsibility for their own plagiarism, rather than our professors having to take that role
Please post these guidelines on your Canvas/Blackboard course and be sure that your students are made aware of them. Please let us know if you have any questions — we are all navigating this unfamiliar terrain together!