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The Battle Against Contract Cheating

The Battle Against Contract Cheating

On October 18, 2023, the American University of Nigeria held a seminar for the National Day For Action Against Contract Cheating. At this annual event, AUN aims to discourage academic dishonesty among students and instill a sense of integrity in them. AUN's academic policies do not leave room for the tolerance of any form of academic dishonesty, so events like this are important to raise awareness among students as well as teach them how to use the proper tools to avoid it.

This year, the seminar gravitated towards contract cheating using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Plagiarism, using someone else's work or idea without proper reference, is one of the most common academic dishonesty practices. With the rapid development of AI tools, it is now easier than ever to obtain ideas from external sources without citations.

During this seminar, the Writing Center staff focused on teaching students ethical ways to use AI tools. One of the student tutors at the Writing Center, Somtochukwu Dan-Okereke, demonstrated the ethical use of Grammarly's built-in AI tool. He demonstrated how it could be used to organize and clean up students' original ideas, which is preferable to using it to generate ideas without referencing. He also raised awareness of self-plagiarism, using ideas from an assignment in a previously taken but similar course. He emphasized the dangers of this and how it is also considered cheating.

By the end of the seminar and the following question-and-answer session, students gained much insight into how to use AI tools ethically. Events such as this are regular and quite important at AUN to teach students how to navigate keeping the oath of academic integrity they made upon receiving admission into this institution. It was one of the many efforts that AUN makes to continue the battle against academic dishonesty.

By Kamsiyochukwu Dan-Okereke

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Adamawa State, Nigeria
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