Part of the mission of the history department is to train students to be critical thinkers in the discipline of history. In doing so, the department expects students to be invested in their education and fully participate in their learning. Regular contributions to Harkness discussions are one measure of this process, but students are also asked to produce work outside that classroom that constitutes a measurement of this work. The expectation that accompanies these assessments in all their various forms is that students are producing work largely on their own merit, utilizing on-campus resources such as the library staff, Writing Center and peer tutoring when warranted. Because graded assessments are to be representative of a student’s understanding and conveyance of scholarly materials, students may consult faculty on campus or family members, but in a limited capacity as critic, not a writer. Students may not purchase papers online, use artificial intelligence to produce written materials, or engage with automated electronic interfaces that generate substantial improvements to a formal assessment. It worth recalling that plagiarism[1] is the unacknowledged use of another person’s ideas or words (or in the case of technology a computer generated algorithm) and these practices either violate this rule or may misrepresent the level of knowledge and vocabulary acquisition by a student.
[1] For a fuller definition of plagiarism, see the History Department Statement on Plagiarism, on the Course Requirements page.