First it was the pandemic, and then it was ChatGPT. There seems to be constant challenges to always choosing integrity.

Here are some tips for Choosing Integrity even when no one is watching.

Tip 1. Pay close attention to assessment (e.g., assignments, tests) instructions and follow them exactly. If an action isn’t explicitly allowed, assume that by engaging in that action, you would be violating academic integrity. NOTE: this even applies to using GenAI Tools like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Midjourney, Google Bard and others.

Tip 2. Sign our Choose Integrity Pledge yourself and/or if provided by your Instructor; research has shown that reminding ourselves of our own values/integrity can help reduce temptations.

Tip 3. Before engaging in any action during an assessment, run your action through the Standards, Exposure, Learning, and Values (SELV) test:

  1. Standards: Is what I’m about to do allowed by this specific assessment instructions or UC San Diego’s academic integrity policy?
  2. Exposure: if the professor or my TA were standing right here watching me, would I still do this?
  3. Learning: am I undermining the expected learning objectives of the assessment by my actions? For example, if the learning objective is to learn how to write in Japanese, then using Google Translate or ChatGPT to translate your language into Japanese would be cheating.
  4. Values: is what I’m about to submit an honest, fair, respectful, responsible and trustworthy demonstration of my knowledge and abilities? 

If the answer is NO to any of these questions, don’t do the action you were considering. Or, if you've already done it, make some other choices:

  1. Don't hand in the assessment— "Take the Zero!"
  2. Redo the assessment
  3. Redo the parts of the assessment that are impacted
  4. Ask for an #integrityextension

Tip 4. Be aware of human tendencies to rationalize behaviors by saying things like “well, everyone else is probably doing it” or “it’s okay given the current situation” or “it’s not that big of a deal”. Those are things we tell ourselves to convince us that it is “okay” to cheat “just this one time”.

Tip 5. Remember that, in the long-run, one grade on one exam is not worth violating your own integrity.