Strong armed into admitting to using AI
Hi everyone (another one of these)
I’m a third year student on a mandatory year abroad programme, and have been strong-armed into admitting I used AI.
For one of my modules our lecturer has been on a warpath with 15 students (ish) being called in for meetings. I got my grade back on a Tuesday, to randomly get an email on Friday morning asking for a same day meeting. I arranged it for straight after my 08:30-10:30 seminar as I had done nothing wrong.
Jump to me being accused of using AI for the entirety of my assignment. She was already 100% convinced that I had and there was no convincing her otherwise. She asked me what paper I used to form my position (I had written it nearly 3 weeks prior and done nearly 3 other assignments since then) and various other questions. Apparently document history was evidence I could have faked, I was happy for her to look at my ChatGPT history (I delete everything after each query, way to look guilty), writing assignments I kind of just raw dog it on one document so I have little to no paper trail of my train of thought.
She then said that I could either admit to it then and there to accept a lesser punishment or she would tear my assignment to shreds in front of me. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to answer 95% of the questions she would ask, therefore I had to admit guilt. Her only proof was that it was”read like very good AI” and that I couldn’t recall anything but the vaguest thing about the assignment.
In short, resulted in getting a 0 for that assignment worth 30% of my grade. I need to pass to be able to finish my degree next year, if not I’ll have to delay graduating an entire year for one lousy module. I have 10 days now to appeal it, reading back I don’t even like some of my arguments. I always acknowledge AI when I have used it, for this one I used it to help phrase the task into a question (we were given 4 bullet points and a statement).
I’m going home in 8 days and I don’t know if I have the will to be able to fight it successfully. Sorry for the slightly disorganised post. (I also have a naturally guilty expression so she used that against me).
Is there anyway to argue this or should I just cut my losses?