Integrity is a crucial part of your character and is essential for a successful career. We expect you to demonstrate integrity in this class and elsewhere.
The Paul G. Allen School has an Academic Misconduct policy, and the University of Washington an Academic Misconduct and Community Standards and Student Conduct Page policy. Please acquaint yourself with those pages, and in particular how academic misconduct will be reported to the University. Knowingly violating any of these principles of academic conduct, privacy or copyright may result in University disciplinary action under the Student Code of Conduct.
The Paul G. Allen School also expects ethical conduct from its instructors. For example, we legalling required to do our part to meet your DRS-approved accommodations, protect your privacy and adhere to basics such as national Title IX standards on sexual harassment. Of course we strive to do better than these basics, including showing respect to students, being professional, and avoiding ethical conflicts such as teaching and helping friends in the class. Should you have any concerns about course staff, you are encouraged to reach out to the instructor, or if you prefer to submit information anonymously to the CSE feedback website
Your academic conduct in this course is evaluated in at least the four areas described in detail below.
Individuals are expected to be honest and forthcoming in communications with TAs and the instructor.
In addition, individuals are expected to show respect for the intellectual contributions of others through citation. The essence of academic life revolves around respect not only for the ideas of others, but also their rights to those ideas. It is therefore essential that we take the utmost care that the ideas (and the expressions of those ideas) of others always be handled appropriately, and, where necessary, cited. This is an issue of Citational Justice, and a core value of this course. It is also in line with the disability justice values of the course.
When ideas or materials of others are used (particularly in your creative projects), they must be cited. The citation format is not that important - as long as the source material can be located and the citation verified, it’s OK. In any situation, if you have a question, please feel free to ask. Here are some examples of how you might use (and cite) different types of content:
Some examples of appropriate use:
Students with questions about any specific situation should ask the instructor for clarification.
In this class, are encouraged to discuss class material, including assignments, lecture material and readings with your classmates. Even better if this takes place on Ed where other students can benefit and we can guide you as to what is supportive and what crosses the line to too much sharing.
Some assignments are individual. Even when as assignment is individual, you may discuss homework assignments with other students (i.e. provide advice, brainstorm) as long your writing and/or implementation is entirely your own, and you document what you do. You may also look at other sources online to learn how to achieve new things, but we expect you to document this, and it may impact the credit you get for your work. You should never copy (plagiarize) from another person in this school (past or present) or from material that you find online directly and submit it as your own work.
To facilitate this, and to be very clear
Honesty and Respect in Communications
It is hard to find someone who has not heard about ChatGPT and related tools, and these tools are undeniably useful for generating ideas, providing suggestions, and more. However, we recommend that you use generative AI in moderation. Generative AI can help you to summarize text, improve grammar, write code, collect relevant resources to read, and generate ideas. It can also lead you to misinformation and is generally less powerful than the hype might lead you to believe, as eloquently described by UW faculty member Emily Bender in her Seattle Times OpEd. AI can be biased (including disability bias), flat out wrong, is built on writing by other people that it might plagiarize and probably doesn’t know much about this course or how to do well in it. If you are interested in learning more about generative AI’s limitations, here is a helpful repository.
In addition to the abovementioned concerns, if you start to rely solely on generative AI, you may limit your own development in critical thinking and writing, and if the results are that your writing is narrower and shallower in scope this may impact your grade.
In this class, we will ask you to follow these ethical guidelines when using generative AI such as ChatGPT. NOTE this policy most likely will evolve over the quarter, since this is such a new situation. I will announce modifications and expect you to abide by them.
Breaking the rules above, or generally using AI tools in ways that are nefarious or unacknowledged, is academic misconduct and may be subject to the misconduct policies detailed here.
Also please note that using such tools has consequences unrelated to your schoolwork. For example, generative AI models use an enormous amount of water and energy: ``ChatGPT needs to “drink” a 500ml bottle of water for a simple conversation of roughly 20-50 questions and answers, depending on when and where ChatGPT is deployed.’’ In addition, you are probably donating your data to the companies that deployed them. Please take reasonable steps to avoid making our assignments easier in future iterations of the course (e.g., once the tool provides a correct answer, don’t give it positive feedback).
To summarize, you may use generative AI unless otherwise specified. However, you must use it ethically, check its work, and ensure that you do not cheat or plagiarize when using it. Further, you will most likely not receive a high grade if you rely on it to the exclusion of your own critical thinking, writing and accessibility skills.
To support an academic environment of rigorous discussion and open expression of personal thoughts and feelings, we, as members of the academic community, must be committed to the inviolate right of privacy of our student and instructor colleagues. As a result, we must forego sharing personally identifiable information about any member of our community including information about the ideas they express, their families, lifestyles and their political and social affiliations. If you have any questions regarding whether a disclosure you wish to make regarding anyone in this course or in the university community violates that person’s privacy interests, please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.
In addition, out of respect for each other, and in accordance with federal guidelines such as FERPA, we will not share each other’s discussion posts or assignments without permission. As instructors, we will ask you before sharing an assignment with a community sponser, for example. Similarly, you should not share your fellow classmates’ work without permission, and credit. We also ask that you not share the ideas ideas presented in this class without credit. While the class website is public, we ask that you do not take things out of context.
In addition, any tangible medium such as digital and physical documents are protected by copyright law as embodied in title 17 of the United States Code. These expressions include the work product of both: (1) your student colleagues (e.g., any assignments published here in the course environment or statements committed to text in a discussion forum); and, (2) your instructor (e.g., the syllabus, assignments, reading lists, and lectures).
Within the constraints of fair use,
you may copy these
copyrighted expressions for your personal intellectual use in support
of your education here in the UW. Such fair use by you does not
include further distribution by any means of copying, performance or
presentation beyond the circle of your close acquaintances, student
colleagues in this class and your family. If you have any questions
regarding whether a use to which you wish to put one of these
expressions violates the creator’s copyright interests, please feel
free to ask the instructor for guidance.
Recall that one of our course policies is to engender an
inclusive environment. As such it is important that you are thoughtful about
what you say or write. Please make sure that
images and text you are using are school appropriate
and follow
the guidelines of expected behavior. If you have any questions,
please do not hesitate to ask the TA or your instructor. Inappropriate work
submitted may be ineligible for credit on that assignment.