Academic Integrity

What academic integrity means with AI

Academic integrity is doing your own thinking and being honest about any help you had. It is an old idea, but AI has made it the question students actually face every week, because the help is now instant, free and very good at producing something that looks finished.

The rule we teach fits in two questions. Can you explain every part of what you handed in, including why it says what it says? And would anyone be misled about the help you had? Pass both and you are almost never in trouble. Fail either and it does not matter whether the help came from AI, a website or an older sibling.

Where the line usually falls

Using AI to quiz you before a test, explain a concept a different way, or point out the weakest part of your argument leaves the thinking with you. Those are study skills, and good ones.

Using it to check grammar, suggest a structure for an essay you have already planned, or summarize a source you have also read is usually fine, but it is exactly where one teacher's rule can differ from another's.

Having it write the paragraphs, produce the analysis, or draft the whole thing and then changing a few words fails the first question: you cannot explain work you did not do. That is where it stops being help and becomes handing the work over.

Disclosure: the easy half

Honesty about help is the part students most often skip, and the easiest to get right. A single line at the end of the work, such as “I used AI to brainstorm topics and to check my grammar”, turns a grey area into an open one. Students who say it before anyone asks almost never end up in a difficult conversation.

The other habit that protects them is keeping the evidence of their own work: notes, drafts, and the version history in a shared document. If a teacher or an AI detector ever questions the work, that trail answers it.

Why it matters for kids

Rules about AI in school change from class to class and year to year. A student who only memorizes the current rule will be caught out by the next one. A student who understands the two questions can work out the right thing to do in a situation no rule has covered yet.

It also protects the reason the work was set in the first place. Homework exists to build a skill; work handed over to AI builds nothing, however good the grade.