If AI is used in digital engineering notebooks, would there be any consequences? I haven’t seen anywhere that says not so I just want to clarify if it is legal or not.
For example- it would be used for better wordage/more professional sounding paragraphs.
From the Guide to Judging:
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) programs or tools to generate or organize Engineering Notebook content or programming code is also contrary to the REC Foundation Student-Centered Policy and Code of Conduct. What AI tools are able to produce from prompts or from building on existing materials does not genuinely represent the skill level of the team utilizing these tools. REC Foundation programs offer opportunities to learn a variety of technical, organizational, and interpersonal skills. Not all students will have the same levels of competence at these skills, but all students will benefit from the practice and application of those skills as a part of the engineering design process, of which the Engineering Notebook is a significant part. The misuse of AI tools, similar to non-student-centered adult involvement, takes opportunities away from students to gain experience at practicing core communication, organizational, independent inquiry, and decision-making skills.
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You should not use AI to write your notebook. The average judge is going to be able to figure out that an IQ roboteers is not writing paragraphs like that. A quick way to get removed from any award consideration.
Look at the documents around “Student Centered” You should also look at the judges guide, that will help cement your decision about not using AI.
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Thanks for the feedback! I was thinking of the same thing, just I could not find anything talking about it.
You’d think that, but its very hard to detect. I know multiple teams that have done it and won awards at signature events.
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Yeah, I know some people in IQ that have the writing skills of a post-college grauate. Also, since highschoolers can be in IQ (well, freshmens) there is a huge variation in notebooking skills. I don’t think a team should be discredited if their notebook is very large, or is well written. Just like you can’t discredit a team if you think their robot is too good for them to build.
How would you prove if a notebook is written using AI?
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One our middle school teams used AI (coaches and mentors don’t review final EN submissions, leaving that to the teams to review themselves). It was discovered at a comp and we received an email a few days later from the RECF Code of Conduct Committee. We had a few days to respond. In that time we investigated and discovered that they had used Ai and it was very obvious. We made them scrap their notebook entirely and start again. After a month, we heard back from the committee and the team was allowed to stay in VEX and the primary mentor was allowed to stay, too. It was nerve-wracking and we hope that all of our teams will learn from this team’s mistake.
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