Guidance on the use of chat robots at the Faculty of Social Sciences
Can you use ChatGPT or other chatbots when you are studying and working on assignments? How do you stay within the guidelines for academic integrity? The Faculty of Social Sciences has created this guide on the use of chatbots when working with academic texts.
Main content
Is it cheating?
As a student, you can be caught cheating if you do not state which sources you use in assignments and on exams. It is against the principles of academic integrity to submit a text that you have not written yourself. Make sure that the text is written in your own words and that you refer to your sources for ideas, quotes, and reasoning.
You must personally take responsibility for your own text and be sure that everything written is correct and follows the requirements for academic integrity and citation. This means that you cannot submit a text where part of or all the text has been generated by a chatbot.
Check whether your department or academic program has its own guidelines for the use of chatbots.
Challenges with chatbots
There are challenges associated with the use of chatbots at universities and schools. While chatbots can be perceived as a good tool for structuring certain forms of standardized texts, it is not a given that the content of the text generated is correct.
When using chatbots in more complex texts like analytical and reasoning texts, or texts dealing with local conditions, it will be less useful. In many cases, the chatbot can generate fictitious references, and it can provide misleading and incorrect information.
As chatbots are not able to reason, but only generate a text, it is also a problem that it presents existing ideas and thoughts without referring to the sources. Thus, it will be a breach of the requirements of academic integrity if you present these ideas as your own.
Using chatbots as a sparring partner in the learning process can in some cases be useful, but be aware of the tool's weaknesses, especially regarding fact-checking and correct source references. If you have used ChatGPT or similar tools, you must disclose this and state in which ways the tool has been used. See also the guidelines on the use of chatbots at your Department/study program.
