The director of studies at a department at Uppsala University reported that a student was suspected of having used unauthorized aids to complete three different assignments on a course comprising of five higher education credits.
The student admitted to having solved the written assignments with the help of ChatGPT, after being confronted with suspicion of cheating.
Was issued a warning
The disciplinary board’s investigation later concluded that the student attempted to mislead by using ChatGPT to complete the examination.
The board chooses to give the student a warning rather than a suspension from studies, arguing that the three assignments in question were only a small part of the examination. Which consisted of another ten assignments.
Universitetsläraren has gone through decisions from the institutions’ disciplinary committees since the start of January 2023, and the case at Uppsala University is the first in which a student has been convicted of cheating with ChatGPT.
At the time of writing, more than twenty disciplinary committees have released their decisions so far.
More cases to come
Chairman of the disciplinary committee at Malmö University, Per Hillbur, has previously said, however, that cases related to the chatbot are on the way in.
The discussion around ChatGPT, which was launched in December by the company OpenAI, has been heavily ongoing in the higher education sector, as Universitetsläraren has reported earlier.
Mikael Wiberg, professor of interaction design and informatics at Chalmers and Umeå universities, then pointed out to Universitetsläraren that he had already received written assignments where students refer to having used ChatGPT.
“As the use of this kind of AI tool is so new, we have not yet formulated practice on it”, he said.
The student who has been warned at Uppsala University has until February 23 to appeal the disciplinary board’s decision.
