Academic Integrity Policy for CBEY Online Programs

 

What is Academic Integrity?

 Academic Integrity is a term used in education to describe the process by which learners:

• Ensure that the work they submit is their own; and
• Give appropriate credit to the original ideas and sources when they have used resources and ideas from others.

 

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is a term used when a participant takes another person's work and claims it, partially or completely, as his/her own idea. The most common type of plagiarism is not crediting the author or source of the original work.

 

What are the CBEY online programs policies regarding academic integrity, plagiarism, and the use of artificial intelligence?

 The Yale Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY)  and its online certificate programs adhere to the Yale School of the Environment and the Yale School of Management policies. All learners enrolled in the online certificate programs of CBEY are expected to uphold the Academic Integrity standards set forth below:

Yale School of the Environment

"The Yale School of the Environment (“YSE”) is a community of scholars engaged in research, scholarship, practice, teaching, and impactful engagement. Its members freely associate themselves with Yale University and in doing so affirm their commitment to a philosophy of tolerance and respect for all members of the community. They pledge to help sustain the intellectual integrity of the University and to uphold its standards of honesty, free expression, and inquiry. "

YSE Student Handbook

 

Yale School of Management

"Honesty is fundamental to the profession and practice of management. It is therefore the bedrock premise of management education at Yale. To the community of students, faculty, and staff of the Yale School of Management, honesty and integrity build the trust essential to a free and lively exchange of ideas.

The Yale SOM Honor Code is intended to foster the School’s exceptional learning environment and to support conduct that will distinguish the faculty, staff, and students in their lives as managers, at school, at school-related functions, and in the larger management community. The Honor Code will be referred to as the “Code” hereafter. 

The Honor Committee has jurisdiction over all Code violations including matters of academic dishonesty and egregious violations of the social and professional norms of behavior."

Yale SOM Rights & Responsibilities of Students

 

How Can I Uphold Academic Integrity?

CBEY online certificate program participants can uphold Yale's policies for academic integrity by documenting source material. If you take any text from somebody else, you must make it clear the text is being quoted and where the text comes from. You must also cite any sources, including artificial intelligence text generators*, from which you obtain numbers, ideas, images or other material. The format used in our programs is Chicago Manual. 

The most common way to document source material is by using in-text citations and reference lists in your assignments, presentations and discussion board postings to properly credit:

• Sources with text that you have quoted directly in your work;
• Sources with ideas that you have summarized or paraphrased; and
• Sources that have influenced the formulation of your own ideas. 

 If you have any questions about what does or does not constitute plagiarism, do not hesitate to email cbey.certificate@yale.edu 

For more guidance, please refer to the Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism guidelines from Yale's Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, found on their site:

Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism guidelines

 

What is an appropriate use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in CBEY’s online certificate programs?  

Learning how to use artificial intelligence text generators (e.g., ChatAPT) is an emerging skill. These tools are useful for generating text with credible-sounding facts. However, AI is prone to “hallucination;” it will often share false data, made-up citations, and incorrect information. In order to effectively use AI in any arena of your life, you must have practice using the tool, know about the topic, and always appropriately cite the work and ideas you develop with AI assistance.  

We expect you may want to use artificial intelligence tools to complete assignments for CBEY’s online certificate programs (e.g., policy memos, discussion questions, short answer quiz questions), and you may do so in a limited fashion in order to enhance your learning. AI, for example, can help you produce error-free sentences and paragraphs. Utilizing these tools for any other purpose, such as helping you achieve the grade you want, or completing assignments quickly is inappropriate and antithetical to real learning. 

Here is what we want you to know about using artificial intelligence responsibly: 

• If you provide minimum-effort prompts, you will get low-quality results. You will need to refine your prompts in order to get good outcomes. This will take work. Copying and pasting discussion prompts, for example, is not recommended. Also, rarely is the first response from AI sufficient.  
• Don’t trust anything it says. If it gives you a number or fact, assume it is wrong unless you either know the answer or can check with another source. You will be responsible for any errors or omissions provided by the tool. It works best for topics you understand. 
• AI is a tool, but one that you need to acknowledge using. You must include a paragraph at the end of any assignment (including discussion questions and quiz responses) in which you use AI to explain what tool you used, for what purpose, and all the prompts you used to get the results. If you directly copy text from the chat bot’s response, you must use quotation marks. Failure to use these references is in violation of academic honesty policies. 
• Be thoughtful about when this tool is useful. Don’t use it if it isn’t appropriate for the case or circumstance. For example, you will likely find it takes an inappropriate amount of effort to utilize AI for discussion questions and short answer quiz questions but find some utility in using it for longer assignments like op-ed pieces. If AI makes answering discussion questions a lot easier, you are probably inappropriately using the tool! Producing meaningful and insightful content through AI is not necessarily easy; it requires both topic expertise and skill. 

 

What are the sanctions for violations of the Academic Integrity standards? 

If any CBEY online certificate program participant is found to be in violation of the Academic Integrity Standards policies mentioned above, the University reserves the right to impose disciplinary or probationary sanctions, including but not limited to reprimand, probation, suspension, failure of course, or dismissal from the certificate program without refund or partial credit for participation. The disciplinary process is outlined below. 

1. Participant commits a violation of the policy above in the context of the online program (e.g., including but not limited to submitting work that is not their own for assignments, failure to indicate text included in a submission is not one’s own, failure to include a source for ideas that have been summarized or paraphrased, etc.). 
2. Either a participant or an instructor (faculty, guest expert, or TA) reports the incident to CBEY (cbey.certificate@yale.edu). 
3. If CBEY staff determine that an incident report is necessary, the instructor/TA initiates an incident report, completing the report with screenshots (preferred with timestamps) and/or links related to the incident. The report is completed and sent to CBEY's Online Programs Director. In the case of the Yale Clean Equitable Energy Development program, this report is also sent to Michel Gelobter and Gerald Torres, lead Faculty for the program. In the case of the Yale Financing and Deploying Clean Energy program, the report is also sent to Robert Klee, lead Faculty for the program. 
4. CBEY staff view the report and consider whether prior incidents have been reported for the participant. If prior violations exist, these violations are included in the incident report.  
5. Either CBEY's Online Programs Director or lead Faculty follows up by pursuing one of the four following options: 

• Circumstances do not indicate the need to escalate intervention. No immediate action taken. Incident is logged in the participants database. 
• CBEY contacts the participant to discuss the matter. Details about the discussion and its outcome are logged in the participants database, the participant receives a zero for the submission, but no further disciplinary action is undertaken. 
• CBEY contacts the participant to discuss the matter. A formal warning is issued, and if deemed appropriate by the lead Faculty or Director of the program, the participant will fail the course(s) impacted by the incident(s). Details about the discussion and its outcome are logged in the participants database. Two warnings will result in dismissal from the program. 
• CBEY contacts the participant to discuss the matter. If the participant was already on probation, or if the violation is deemed so severe that it warrants immediate dismissal, CBEY proceeds with dismissal from the certificate with prejudice. The discussion and its outcome are logged in the participants database. Access to the learning and community platforms will be suspended, and tuition will not be returned. The participant does not receive the certificate. The participant is disqualified from enrolling in future cohorts of the same program. The participant is disqualified from enrolling in future online certificate programs at CBEY.  

6. Appeal to the CBEY Executive Director: A participant who is sanctioned may appeal to the Executive Director of CBEY.  The appeal must be in writing and received by the CBEY Executive Director within seven (7) days of the panel’s decision. The CBEY Executive Director may revise the decision only in cases where (a) evidence that would have substantially affected the decision was unavailable to the participant until after the investigatory meeting; (b) errors in procedure may have substantially affected the decision; or (c) the sanction is grossly disproportionate to the behavior. The decision of the CBEY Executive Director upon appeal is final.