Academic Advocacy is a professional service of QUT Guild, committed to supporting and representing the interests and needs of students in academic matters, navigating university policies and advocating for better quality of education. The Advocacy Team are collaborating with Glass on a series of articles to make sure you know your rights and to help students get through their studies as successfully as possible.
This article was written by Advocate, Sam Taylor.
When working on university assignments, it can be really tempting to look for shortcuts and tools to make things a bit easier. In some cases, this can be a great idea – I certainly would have struggled to graduate without EndNote to automate referencing styles, or the spell-checker that comes with Word to make proofreading easier. There are, however, a number of tools that you really should avoid. These mostly fall under a few specific categories:
Generative AI
You’re probably not surprised to see generative AI mentioned, as this rapidly evolving area of technology is already seeing widespread use to generate student assignments. QUT considers the use of generative AI to be contract cheating, which attracts some of the highest penalties of all academic integrity breaches. If you use generative AI, like ChatGPT or Google Gemini, to create or contribute to your assignment, it is highly likely that your teaching staff will know and that you will face a penalty. Even if you don’t receive a penalty, the output of this software will almost always be of low quality and poor accuracy, making the choice to avoid these tools even easier.
While it might already be clear that using ChatGPT to write an essay for you is inappropriate, it is also important to note that for most units at QUT, any use of generative AI is against the rules. If you are working on a design project using Adobe Creative Cloud, make sure you don’t utilise any of the AI-driven features, unless you have permission from your unit coordinator. Have a programming assignment? GitHub Copilot is probably not a good choice either. Many students use tools like Grammarly as an alternative to other spelling and grammar-checking tools, but this type of software now comes with AI functions that are not permissible for submitted assignments – so check over your current assignment workflow to eliminate any unauthorised use of generative AI.
File sharing sites
These are risky for a few reasons. If you access another student’s assignment from a previous semester, you are not conducting valid research and are running the risk of plagiarising their content or engaging in collusion, which can very easily be detected by academic staff. Additionally, many of these sites will ask you to upload a document of your own in order to gain access to study notes or completed assignments. Uploading your own assignment is a breach of academic integrity (collusion) and could result in significant penalties, particularly if another student decides to plagiarise using your assignment. QUT’s MOPP provides examples of collusion as:
“knowingly allowing own assessment work to be copied by another student;sharing completed or draft answers to summative assessment items, where it is reasonable to expect that the material, wholly or in part, will be submitted for assessment by others; obtaining or reading others’ completed or draft assessment work to gain an unfair advantage.”
This means that even if you don’t use other people’s completed assignments in your work, you could still be unknowingly taking part in collusion and breaching academic integrity! Uploading university materials is very likely a breach of copyright law, which may also be taken seriously by the University.
Some of these sites are deceptive, intentionally making it difficult for you to remove uploads by requiring a detailed application process to take down the content you have submitted. Many also promise financial rewards for sharing course materials and assignments without following through on these payments, despite the huge level of risk involved in this type of file sharing. If you need study notes, classroom materials or an example of what your assignment should look like, reach out to your teaching staff instead of jeopardising your degree with these risky sites.
Automated paraphrasing tools
Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools like these have been around for a long time but are growing in sophistication and marketing presence. Ultimately, you need to present your ideas in your own words (unless using direct quotes) when working on assessment, so it simply isn’t a good idea to present someone else’s ideas or words as your own. Most of the time the use of these tools will be fairly obvious to your teaching staff – it simply won’t be written in the same style as the rest of your document, while still being too similar to the original text.
Many of these tools now utilise generative AI components in addition to simple NLPs, putting you at risk of contract cheating allegations on top of plagiarism. It’s a much better idea to work on your paraphrasing skills instead of looking for a shortcut, and these skills will continue to be useful throughout your career beyond academic study.
How to access support
While the allure of shortcuts and tools to ease the academic workload may be tempting, certain choices can set you back in the long run. Instead of resorting to risky tools, focus on honing your skills and, when in doubt, seek support from your teaching staff to ensure a successful academic journey and if you do get into trouble reach out to the Academic Advocacy team.
About the author, Sam Taylor, Advocate at QUT Student Guild Advocacy:
I’m Sam Taylor, one of QUT Guild’s Academic Advocates. Former student and teacher in QUT’s School of Creative Practice, I also love working on filmmaking projects post my ABC experience. Engaged in union organising with NTEU and Together (ASU), I’m dedicated to student advocacy, offering support and navigating policies for seven years across various institutions. Looking ahead, I plan to pursue a Master of Philosophy (Communication). University life can be both incredibly joyful and overwhelming, so it’s always a pleasure assisting people with their personal goals, successes and concerns. Please feel free to reach out to me if you see me on campus and want to say hi or require assistance!
