College Student Fails A Class For Using Grammarly To Check An Essay's Punctuation And Grammar
She was accused of "unintentionally cheating" by using Grammarly to check for any mistakes in her essay.
fizkes / Shutterstock For students, there are a plethora of tips, tricks, and programs they can use to ensure their essays are in top shape before turning them in to the professor.
However, one college student named Marley Stevens revealed that she was reprimanded for using a common writing assistance program to check her essay for grammatical errors.
Stevens failed a class for using Grammarly to check the punctuation and grammar of her essay.
"Public service announcement for you," she began in her video. "If you have a paper, essay, discussion post, anything that is submitted to Turnitin, uninstall Grammarly from your web browser right now."
Grammarly is used by millions of people daily and is described as an AI writing assistance program to help people with their spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes in any piece of writing. The program is also able to detect plagiarism and suggest replacements.
Many professors actually recommend Grammarly, but when Stevens turned in an essay for her criminal justice class, her professor gave her an automatic zero on it.
"I talked to the teacher, the department head, and the dean, and I was unintentionally cheating using Grammarly," she shared. "Grammarly uses generative AI to do spell check and punctuation check, so when I turned this paper in, I got a zero because it was using AI."
In a follow-up video, Stevens shared the email she, and everyone on her campus, received from the Office of Student Integrity after her video went viral. “Please be aware that some online tools used to assist students with grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, etc, utilize generative artificial intelligence, which can be flagged by Turnitin,” the email stated, specifically citing Grammerly.
“Clearly, if they sent it to everyone at the school, I'm not the only one who's had a problem with this,” she added.
Stevens also shared the initial email she received notifying her that she got a zero on her paper because Turnitin, an app that detects AI and plagiarism, returned a positive response for AI. “Using AI is cheating and not your work,” her professor wrote.
Unfortunately, AI detection is not always accurate. Because of the ever-evolving nature of artificial intelligence, false positives are absolutely possible. In fact, research found that, on average, the most popular detectors are only 60% accurate.
When Stevens didn’t receive any help from her professor or his superior, she met with the dean who informed her that this has been happening a lot. Still, his only advice was to report them to the Office of Student Integrity or retake the class.
But, in a third video responding to a comment, Stevens shared that another student who experienced the same issue did report it to the Office of Student Integrity. Shockingly, the student lost their misconduct appeal and now has an academic misconduct charge on their record.
As a result, Steven's only advice to her fellow students is this: "Uninstall Grammarly right now."
A university marker who evaluated and graded students' exams gave her take whether or not Grammarly is considered plagiarism.
In a TikTok video, a content creator named Sheridan responded to a comment asking if Grammarly was a tool that people could use without being accused of plagiarizing their work. In response, she claimed that it's a bit of a grey area and depends on a wide range of factors.
"I think with all things, it's really going to depend on your university and how exactly you were using the tool," Sheridan said. "Grammarly as a software does a bunch of different stuff. For example, their free plan does stuff like spell check, general grammar checks, and those types of things."
Sheridan pointed out that normal Word documents also have those same tools, so from her perspective, she doesn't see a problem with it. However, for new premium plans on Grammarly, they go a step further and can use generative AI to completely rewrite sentences which she explained is a crossing a boundary of students not writing their own essays.
"I think it's a good tool for getting better at writing, but I think if you do start using it all the time in your writing it can cause issues," she said. "I have also heard that some universities prohibit Grammarly."
She advised any college students to look into their school's policies because if you're not careful, the tool can fall into the category of cheating. Using Grammarly for things like spell check and general grammar check is fine in her opinion but be careful when it comes to the AI portion of the program that completely rewrites essays.
With the emergence of AI tools such as Grammarly and ChatGPT, college students are beginning to depend on them to write their papers and assignments. According to BestColleges, the majority of college students (56 percent) report having used AI on assignments or exams.
In the end, it's important to be aware that in a college environment, the use of AI incurs the risk of failing the class or getting kicked out of the school. While Grammarly is certainly helpful, it's not worth damaging your future and career.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.