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Research 101

Academic Honesty

STCC’s Academic Honesty Policy describes plagiarism as "including but not limited to ... copying or purchasing other’s work, patchworking source material and representing the work as one’s own, or arranging for others to do work."   

You can avoid plagiarism by:
  • Citing your sources - use a standard method (such as APA Style) to give credit for where you found information, even when you rewrite it in your own words.
  • Putting "quotation marks" around short excerpts of text that you copy word-for-word. 
  • Including a bibliography, or Works Cited, page that lists all the sources you cited. 

Some tips:

  • Basic, well-known facts are okay to use without citing them (e.g. Washington was our first President).
  • Give yourself plenty of time for research and writing. It's a learning process!  

What about using AI?

STCC’s Academic Honesty Policy details how cheating (using unauthorized assistance) and plagiarism (copying from one or more sources) are not allowed in school. Unless your class professor has said otherwise, this includes using AI tools like ChatGPT for coursework.   

Students, please first check with your professors about whether using AI to help with coursework is acceptable before trying it for any assignments. 

Be Smart: GenAI Has Downsides, Too

There are several limitations and areas of concern with ChatGPT and other GenAI, such as:

  • Inconsistency: Responses (output) will change if you alter the prompt even slightly, or if the same prompt is used multiple times.
  • Incorrect information: GenAI sometimes presents plausible-sounding but incorrect information, since verifying the truth of its sources is not currently part of training. Even when it provides links to sources, it's unable to avoid basic lapses in logic due to how it is built.
  • Biased information is also a concern. The prejudices of society are reflected in the data used to train AI systems, even when this is not intentional. This means that tools such ChatGPT "cannot recontextualize or independently seek out new information that contradicts their built-in assumptions” (Williams, 2023). 

Be skeptical and use these tools with care!